BuddyPress.org

Okay, so I quickly ran WP Hook Sniffer and saw that the remove_action function does not get fired because when it is invoked, the function friends_setup_nav has not yet been added via the add_action function. Furthermore, the add_action request in your bp-custom.php file is invoked before the add_action request hooked to friends_setup_nav(). So, whereas your custom navigation code is being triggered, it is quickly replaced with the default, core friends navigation code in friends_setup_nav().

The simple solution is to set the priority of your custom function to something greater than 10. Don’t even bother with the remove_action function as it will never work at this point in code execution.

add_action( ‘bp_setup_nav’, ‘my_friends_setup_nav’, 11 );

That should work!