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The lab coats at Yamaha have been hard at work, this time doing some engineering for their long-time partner, Toyota Motor Corporation.

Though not destined for two-wheels, Yamaha’s creation today is still pretty cool addition to our pages, as the work centers around a 5.0L V8 engine that is fueled entirely by hydrogen. The motor puts out 450hp and 400 lbs•ft of torque.

Tomorrow, we will see the next iteration of the Harley-Davidson Sportster – a move tipped by the Bar & Shield brand’s not to subtle “From Evolution to Revolution” premiere tagline.

That tagline is a nod to the names of the Evolution motor that powered the previous Sportster generation, as well as Revolution being the name of Harley-Davidson’s new motor platform, which also powers the Pan America 1250 adventure bike.

The new Sportster is tipped to look a lot like the Harley-Davidson 1250 Custom that Milwaukee has been teasing, and now the latest reports are saying that the new Sportster will have a potent 120hp on tap.

The Ducati Multistrada V4 has been making waves in the adventure-touring space since its debut last month, but for some unlucky owners, that fun is about to come to a stop.

This is because Ducati has found quality issues with the valve guides on some of the V4 Granturismo motors, which could lead to excessive wear and could cause the engine to lose power and ultimately fail at the head.

After a bit of teasing, we finally get to know the details of Ducati’s newest engine, the V4 Granturismo. This is the four-cylinder motor that will power the new and upcoming Ducati Multistrada V4 motorcycle.

The engine is based off the Desmosedici Stradale motor that is found in the Panigale V4 and Streetfighter V4 motorcycles, but with some obvious and core changes to suit it for touring and ADV riding uses.

In two days, Ducati will officially unveil the V4 engine that will power its new Multistrada V4, which means that the Italian brand is currently in the midst of an extensive media campaign on the new motorcycle.

Today, we learned the name of this new motor; the Ducati V4 Granturismo engine, which is interesting in its own right, as it shows a departure from the “Desmosedici Stradale” nomenclature that powers the Panigale V4 and Streetfighter V4 motorcycles.

Ducati has begun officially teasing a new V4 engine platform on its website and social media channels – a move that is almost certainly the beginning of an unveiling for the Ducati Multistrada V4 adventure-touring motorcycle (the two off-road / on-road panels are a bit of a giveaway, shown above).

That a V4 version of the Multistrada was coming has been known for quite some time, with even Ducati CEO Claudio Domenicali acknowledging that we would see the new model by the end of this year.

So that news, coupled to a bevy of spy photos that have caught the machine testing in its pre-production form, give us a good idea what to expect about this new model.

Still, there are some details we do not know about the Multistrada V4, and Ducati seems intent on teasing out those details in the coming weeks, via various “theorems” it is postulating. 

Though few details we given at this year’s EICMA show, we were thankful that we get to look forward to another year of BMW Motorrad hyping its upcoming air-cooled lineup of cruiser-styled motorcycles, which are known as the BMW R18 family.

That is right, the fun isn’t over, and surely the German motorcycle brand will delight us at least one more time with another concept machine that shows off its 1,800cc air-cooled boxer engine, and all of its massive glory.

Until then though, BMW Motorrad has decided to tease out the engine’s very impressive technical specifications, in an effort to appease the countless number of fans who are eagerly awaiting this motorcycle.

We just published a long story for our A&R Pro readers about the new rev limits in the WorldSBK Championship, and how the Ducati Panigale V4 R is ringing out to 16,500 RPM in the production racing class.

One of the ways that Borgo Panigale was able to bring such a high rev limit to its Desmosedici Stradale engine was through the use of lightweight titanium connecting rods. The red bikes are not alone on this, as the big go-fast change for the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10RR is also titanium con rods, courtesy of Pankl.

Pound for pound stronger than steel, titanium has been helping raise the roof on rev limits for quite some time now…and maybe it is time to give another element on the periodic table a chance. Like say…carbon?

“There’s no replacement for displacement” in racing but what about power? In particular what about peak power and where a bike reaches it?

For WorldSBK purposes, the peak power of an engine is defined as the rev limit on the production machine, plus 3%.

Calculating this takes a little bit more math, as it requires you to average the rev limit from both the third and fourth gears, and then once this has been established, the FIM typically add an extra 3% to that RPM figure.

The rev limits are defined at the start of the championship season, but they aren’t set in stone for the duration of the championship. They can be changed at the discretion of organisers as the year progresses.

Having been introduced to much fanfare 12 months ago, the new limits are of interest again in 2019 because we have new bikes on the grid. The most newsworthy new machine is the headline grabbing Ducati Panigale V4 R, but it should be noted that  Kawasaki, BMW and Honda also have newly homologated bikes, and thus also new rev limits.

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