PATENTS confirm Harley-Davidson’s working on a NEW air-cooled V-TWIN engine.

Patents filed by Harley-Davidson confirm that the iconic American factory is working on the successor to its Milwaukee Eight power plant.

Harley-Davidson has long since relied on traditional, air-cooled V-Twin engines – and it doesn’t look like things are going to change too much, with the American factory filing patents for a new air-cooled V-Twin power plant.

The headline news is its new overhead-valve system, which will allow the engine to achieve higher engine speeds than the current Milwaukee-Eight engine. Basically, the patents show that the four-valve-per-cylinder engine has pushrods on each side of the cylinder – with each rod activating a single rocker arm. When the rod moves up, the rocker pushes two valves down.

The patent also suggests that the new design will increase performance and make the engine easier to maintain and work on. More specifically, the new engine will redline between 6800 to 7000rpm – whereas the current Milwaukee-Eight engine redlines at about 5,500 rpm.

No news about when and where we’ll see the new engine – but it’s good to see H-D is still trying to innovate its much loved V-Twin.