Harley-Davidson Engine Remanufacturing

In-Depth
It's sad to say, but our trusty '89 H-D FLHS had seen better days. We had been overlooking the dots of oil on the ground when we parked it. We had even ignored the noise coming from the top end, hoping it would magically clear itself up. Suffice it to say the old girl needed an engine rebuild. After swallowing that fact, we thought long and hard on what to do. Do we punch it out to some crazy big-inch motor and wheelie it until the frame cracks? Do we get an aftermarket engine from another manufacturer or do we just rebuild the old one to factory specs? After even more soul searching we thought: "Why don't we just have the company that built the motor in the first place redo it?"

Since 1999 Harley-Davidson has been providing the service of remanufacturing its factory OEM engines. Harley builds over 1,500 of these "remanned" motors a year. As opposed to the biker guy down the street or your cousin's friend Snake, H-D uses state-of-the-art machinery such as computer-controlled measuring processors and honing mills to get the job done. And they do it in about two weeks' time!

The price of getting an Evolution motor rebuilt from tip to tail is right around $2,000 with Twin Cams being only slightly higher. The remanufactured engine also comes backed with a one-year warranty directly from H-D.

After talking to the big wigs at Harley about remanufacturing our motor, we were instructed to bring the FLHS to Anaheim-Fullerton Harley-Davidson where one of the technical staff, Kevin, would pull the motor. Though this step is not included in the price of the remanufacturing, your local H-D dealer has been expertly trained to do so. We highly suggest this step because the dealer knows exactly what needs to be done as well as what items need to be sent to the factory along with the engine.

Once Kevin freed the motor from the rest of the bike, he drained it of all fluids and packed it up in a special H-D crate. It was then sent it off via truck to Harley's Capital Drive facility in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. The Capital Drive plant was originally built in 1943 as a propeller manufacturing facility for the B29 Super Fortress planes. Currently it's home to Harley-Davidson's XL engine manufacturing and the remanufacturing of Evolution and Twin Cam motors.

Once the engine arrived at the Capital Drive plant, it received a thorough teardown and cleaning. The remanufacturing division is made up of millions of dollars of state-of-the- art equipment, and the smallest detail of each motor they reman is looked upon as the most important step of the process. Every part of the engine is checked for wear, and if the parts are not to original specifications, they are melted down and recycled. All of the reusable parts of the engine are then hot-tank cleaned and either rebored or rehoned to factory tolerances. Even small items such as the oil pump gears and pushrods are checked for the smallest amount of wear and replaced if not in perfect condition.

Once the cases, heads, valves, and cylinders pass a final battery of specification checks, they are either replaced or remachined. After they are brought to factory specs, the cast parts are then black or silver powdercoated to a like-new condition. It is at this time that the engine is ready to go back together. Each remanned engine receives treatment via a staff of four people who are trained for certain aspects of the task and to quadruple-check each other's work.

Once our engine rebuild was completed, it was test run on a dyno for a minimum of six minutes and monitored for oil pressure, temperature, and any sort of leaks.

After the engine proved to be a good runner it was crated up and shipped back to us. Total time from doorstep to doorstep was 12 days. Now that is service!

Look for the newly revamped Evolution engine to be installed with some new induction as well as transmission and primary drive upgrades in the next issue of Hot Bike.