Revived Harley Factory Tour Includes ‘Engine 101’ Class

One aspect of covering automotive engineering is the periodic opportunity to tour carmakers’ factories. Do this enough times and it is easy to forget that most people haven’t seen the inside of a factory in action.

So, when Harley-Davidson announced that it was reactivating tours of its Pilgrim Road Powertrain Operations in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, it seemed like a good time to point out this opportunity to see the hardware get bolted together up close and in person.

Harley suspended its factory tours during the pandemic but has restored the powertrain plant tour. While Harley-Davidson is famously headquartered in Milwaukee, the company’s Wisconsin plant only builds its iconic V-twin engines.

The motorcycles are assembled in York, Pennsylvania and the York plant tour still has not resumed.

However, the bonus to touring the engine plant is the opportunity to participate in an “Engines 101” class. In the class, guests get to break down the Harley engine’s components and functions and discuss 4-stroke engine performance. Then they participate in a hands-on simulation of assembly.

Chevrolet has offered Corvette customers a chance to travel to the factory to actually assemble their own new car’s engine, so that would be a cool feature if Harley could consider it. That would also provide an advantage over foreign rivals, whose factories are less convenient to visit even if they did also offer the same experience.

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For the factory tour, guests have to don dorky glasses, ahem, “eye protection” and a highway worker-grade orange vest. They also wear a wireless headset to let them hear the tour guide’s discussion over the background noise of the plant even if they are not close to the guide.

Guests need to stay within the painted lines on the floor to stay clear of the workers moving things around the factory’s aisles. Harley doesn’t specify, but most factory tours reject photography, so guests might not be able to pull out their phones for snapshots during the tour.