Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Who needs pushrods?



A nice 3D rendering of a Ducati bevel drive motor dissection. More here.

4 comments:

aaron said...

Who needs valve springs

Dave-O said...

I don't think I've ever seen this. Ingenious design. I would imagine those spiral bevel gears need to be replaced, and would be expensive and the dealership would have to replace them. The normal pushrod design wears out, but I think would be easier for the garage mechanic to service.

Ben said...

If the bevel drive is machined tight out of quality metal and oil kept clean they should last near forever. Same concept as the shaft drive on my Suzuki, which has needed zero maintenance except oil changes for 30 years!

As for valve springs..I suppose some cylinder walls and heads and cases would help too! To hold in the oil and stuff.

aaron said...

I meant that it doesn't have any valve springs. It's desmo. Doesn't need them. Notice the forked lifter about half way down the valve stem--this pulls the valve closed according to the profile of the cam lobe that's just for closing the valves.

I've never heard of the bevel drives being a problem. Much more solid than cam chains. I'm sure they weren't all japanese reliable, but there was that guy cycle world did an article on that did over 200k miles on an original green frame 750 without an engine rebuild.