VMax engine tech from ditched Harley project?

[Sonoran6]

A guy I work with was "schooling" me on the v4 engine and Vboost tech. He claimed that Harley was designing the new v4 in the late 70's and scrapped it selling some of the patents to Honda who then sold the tech info to Yamaha. Speculation or truth to this?

 

[ZackDaniels]

V4's came out of Europe crazy early - like in the 20-30's. In the 70's harley was owned by a bowling company that couldn't even make the existing bikes correctly. Most of your 'LOL HARLEY RELIABILITY' comments come from that decade. It's a massive black spot on Harley that haunts them to this day.

Absolutely not. No. Nothing about that company in that era did anything good or engineered anything worth stealing.

Harley timeline:
WW2 vets want bikes, Harley responds with crazy amounts of success. Virtually define the biker image that's around today.
Sons inherit company.
Sons sell Harley to a bowling company.
AMF fucks things up so bad the reputation is permanently scarred.
Sons buy company back at a fraction of the cost they sold it.
Spend 20 or so years fixing the damage from AMF both in reputation and engineering.
Harley now mikes great bikes with emphasis on daring design and occasional notable engineering breakthroughs. The only problem is they still cost way too much.

 

[sdt354]

A guy I work with was "schooling" me on the v4 engine and Vboost tech. He claimed that Harley was designing the new v4 in the late 70's and scrapped it selling some of the patents to Honda who then sold the tech info to Yamaha. Speculation or truth to this?

I have read this before. I have no reason to believe it isn't so. The V-boost is a Japanese design for the Vmax, to the best of my Knowledge. http://www.bikerenews.com/AntiqueBikes/CodeNameNova.htm Who couldn't love a V-4?
Steve-o

 

[Sonoran6]

I have read this before. I have no reason to believe it isn't so. The V-boost is a Japanese design for the Vmax, to the best of my Knowledge. http://www.bikerenews.com/AntiqueBikes/CodeNameNova.htm Who couldn't love a V-4?
Steve-o

Great article! Thank you so much, now I will have to ask him to explain more about the Vboost allegations.

 

[Fire-medic]

Well I was going to post some pics from the H-D Museum of their Nova engine & some mock-ups, but the uploading is not co-operating tonight. Sorry!

Old posts w/pics of the engines: http://www.vmaxforum.net/showthread.php?t=18894&highlight=Museum

http://www.vmaxforum.net/showthread.php?t=24389&highlight=Museum

 

[Rusty McNeil]

Other than being a V4 I don't see any similarities in the engine design.

Would love to have one of those in my garage. I wonder if any of them made it to the collector market?

 

[ZackDaniels]

I stand corrected on my bowling company timeline. They planned and engineered a super bike, then sold out to a bowling company that shit canned the whole project within a couple of years.

To cover the desired range of displacements, the Nova family would share many common, interchangeable components. The basic concept revolved around a 60-degree V-cylinder arrangement of two, four and six cylinders. Other requirements included liquid cooling, double overhead camshafts, a balance shaft to reduce vibration and a five-speed gearbox. The valve gear and even the gearbox were to be interchangeable. In addition to carbureted models, a fuel-injected version would also be developed.

All the engines were designed to use either 200cc or 250cc "wet" cylinder liners and pistons. These would interchange between the V-twin, V-4 and V-6 engines (see chart, Nova Displacements, page 34). So the 800cc and 1,000cc fours are basically made of two 400/500cc twins, and the 1,200cc and 1,500cc six-cylinder versions consist of three banks of twins.

Nothing about vboost or butterfly valves or anything regarding that.

The 1500cc model would crank 135hp which is comparable to the 85 VMax but would be using more CC's and 6 cylinders to do it.

It also says nothing about Yamaha getting anything to do with the plans, they name drop Porche but that's it. It's a high powered super bike that never made it out of prototype... it doesn't appear to share much with the Honda Magna, Venture, or V-Max.

Harley planned a super bike line with 3 different types of engine, carbureted and fuel-injected, multiple valve configs and gearboxes... then somehow it just never made it to production. This is not the same as : Every other bike since, especially the really ground breaking ones has just ripped off that project.

 

[RaWarrior]

And a touring model

Those look an awful lot like scoops to me....six years before the vmax hit dealers.

"The radiator lies almost horizontally, with two large forward-facing scoops protruding forward from what normally would be the fuel tank, funneling air into a plenum chamber above the radiator. A fan under the radiator pulls air through it, down and rearward, away from the rider and passenger. What began as a styling imperative offered inherent advantages. The air intake is mounted well above ground level, preventing debris from being sucked into the radiator. Because the airflow is channeled and controlled, a smaller radiator can be used with greater efficiency. And almost as important at the time, the "invisible" radiator kept Willie G. and his stylists happy. "

The bike sounded very interesting, and if it had been released, may have drastically changed motorcycle history. Imagine if Yamaha and Honda released V4's to compete against a Harley that had done it first? Imagine Harley leading the way in performance and innovation? Honestly the MC world could be a total 180* from what it is.

But in the end, when it came down to pursuing the Nova against "rework what we know sells", it was the latter. Innovate or stagnate, and stagnate won. 40 years later and they've still got the same philosophy.

I don't doubt that Honda and Yamaha were aware of this scrapped project. Honda thought that HD was onto something and there was a gap in the market....a high performance standard/cruiser. Once they heard the Nova was "dead" in the early 80's....a year or two later the V65 magna came out. Honda saw that HD dropped the ball so they snatched it right back up again. And the V65 sold like hotcakes and marked the start of the musclebike era.

 

[ouchez]

And a touring model

Those look an awful lot like scoops to me....six years before the vmax hit dealers.

"The radiator lies almost horizontally, with two large forward-facing scoops protruding forward from what normally would be the fuel tank, funneling air into a plenum chamber above the radiator. A fan under the radiator pulls air through it, down and rearward, away from the rider and passenger. What began as a styling imperative offered inherent advantages. The air intake is mounted well above ground level, preventing debris from being sucked into the radiator. Because the airflow is channeled and controlled, a smaller radiator can be used with greater efficiency. And almost as important at the time, the "invisible" radiator kept Willie G. and his stylists happy. "

The bike sounded very interesting, and if it had been released, may have drastically changed motorcycle history. Imagine if Yamaha and Honda released V4's to compete against a Harley that had done it first? Imagine Harley leading the way in performance and innovation? Honestly the MC world could be a total 180* from what it is.

But in the end, when it came down to pursuing the Nova against "rework what we know sells", it was the latter. Innovate or stagnate, and stagnate won. 40 years later and they've still got the same philosophy.

I don't doubt that Honda and Yamaha were aware of this scrapped project. Honda thought that HD was onto something and there was a gap in the market....a high performance standard/cruiser. Once they heard the Nova was "dead" in the early 80's....a year or two later the V65 magna came out. Honda saw that HD dropped the ball so they snatched it right back up again. And the V65 sold like hotcakes and marked the start of the musclebike era.

No different from GM and Ford, no real innovation, if you want that look offshore.

O