diff --git a/solr/CHANGES.txt b/solr/CHANGES.txt
index 93faa36a57e..41f87356319 100644
--- a/solr/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/solr/CHANGES.txt
@@ -164,6 +164,9 @@ Bug Fixes
 
 * SOLR-12814: Metrics history causing "HttpParser URI is too large >8192" when many collections (janhoy)
 
+* SOLR-12836: ZkController creates a cloud solr client with no connection or read timeouts. Now the http client
+  created by the update shard handler is used instead. (shalin)
+
 Improvements
 ----------------------
 * SOLR-12767: Solr now always includes in the response of update requests the achieved replication factor
diff --git a/solr/core/src/java/org/apache/solr/cloud/ZkController.java b/solr/core/src/java/org/apache/solr/cloud/ZkController.java
index 831827731bc..d5de5dd2db4 100644
--- a/solr/core/src/java/org/apache/solr/cloud/ZkController.java
+++ b/solr/core/src/java/org/apache/solr/cloud/ZkController.java
@@ -671,7 +671,8 @@ public class ZkController {
       if (cloudManager != null) {
         return cloudManager;
       }
-      cloudSolrClient = new CloudSolrClient.Builder(Collections.singletonList(zkServerAddress), Optional.empty()).build();
+      cloudSolrClient = new CloudSolrClient.Builder(Collections.singletonList(zkServerAddress), Optional.empty())
+          .withHttpClient(cc.getUpdateShardHandler().getDefaultHttpClient()).build();
       cloudManager = new SolrClientCloudManager(new ZkDistributedQueueFactory(zkClient), cloudSolrClient);
     }
     return cloudManager;