Finally, we have an answer to one of the weirdest moto stories of past spring: Why did Harley-Davidson abruptlyshut down production at its US factories, without really explaining it? Now, we’ve got an official line from the company. Supposedly, H-D shut its production down over a regulatory issue with brake hoses.

新闻曝光新利18苹果下载在上周的卡尔l with company bigwigs, explaining H-D’s 2022 second quarter financials (see the whole transcripthere). At the start of the call, H-D mastermind Jochen Zeitz said:

The decision we took to temporarily close our production facilities and suspend vehicle shipments was taken out of an abundance of caution and related to regulatory compliance issue with the brake hoses provided by tier 2 to our tier 1 suppliers.

Motorcycle.comspeculates this was something to do with Brembo brake assemblies, as Brembo supplies brakes for many Harley-Davidson models. From Zeitz’s comments, we can guess that the issue arose with Brembo (a Tier 1 supplier, but H-D’s call didn’t identify Brembo specifically) due to components that came from another party (the Tier 2 supplier, also not identified).

Based on an average of 4,500 bikes built per week, this year’s shutdown set Harley-Davidson’s production back by 10,000-12,000 bikes, said Gina Goetter, Harley-Davidson’s Chief Financial Officer, but she added that production has resumed at an accelerated pace, meaning the company should be able to make up that shortfall. With plenty of demand for even used Harley-Davidsons (remember, the MoCo has anin-house used sales program as well), the company’s leaders say money is continuing to roll in, even with the hiccup of the shutdown.