The rumors that Harley-Davidson has been eying a liquid-cooled motor design have always been in abundance, and 10 years ago we saw the company test the waters of that pool with the Porsche-engineered lump that was found in the V-Rod. While the VRSC line may not have been as big of a success compared to the other models in Harley’s line-up, the water-cooled bastard child of Milwaukee still seems to sell in the tens of thousands each year, even after nearly a decade of only cosmetic revisions.

Faced with an aging demographic, an uninspired motorcycle line-up, and 21 takes on the same motorcycle design, there’s a push internally at Harley-Davidson to break-out and find a new way to engage riders, especially younger riders. The core ethos of change seems to start at the motor itself, and Harley-Davidson has already done the rounds at various electric motorcycle and drivetrain companies. There also exists amount of external and internal pressure over Harley’s pervasive use of air-cooled motors, and now whispers of a water-cooled v-twin power plant have gotten louder in Milwaukee. With those rumors now reaching a boiling point (see what I did there?), Harley-Davidson has patented a very clever way of adding liquid-cooling to its iconic v-twin motor design.

Moto Morini’s bankruptcy has been going painfully slow, but it’s all about to come to a head, as the Italian company will be put up on the auction block April 13th. The Super-Saver Moto Morini package includes all the appropriate intellectual property, assets, and equipment (sans motorcycles, which are being sold separately) for the cool sum of €5.5 million. Should no one want the whole kit ‘n kaboodle, a cheaper price of €2.6 million will be set for the production complex with two years use included. These prices are of course the auction’s guide prices.

There’s something happening on the electric side of the motorcycle industry, but no one is talking publicly about it. It’s a fragile idea, and it feels like even mentioning it could jeopardize its very existence. Because of this, I’ve wrestled with putting words down to discuss the topic, not wanting to be the person to spoil the whole thing.

However, lately so many influential people involved with electric motorcycles have independently brought up the subject with me that this discussion is not only becoming unavoidable, but perhaps airing the idea out in public will facilitate some sort of greater dialogue between the different parties. The concept that I’m referring to is of course consolidation.

Bombardier has been busy over the past two years, presumably working on something new for the Can-Am Spyder. While not exactly a new idea, the Canadian company has devised a control system for a leaning vehicle…a three-wheeled vehicle shaped like a Spyder according to the patent application that was filed in in July 2009, and published this January (yes, it really takes the USPTO that long just to publish an application, let alone grant a patent). While the technical drawings have little bearing on the final product, it would at least seem logical to conclude that we can expect a leaning Can-Am Spyder in the near future.

For now this technology is just in the application process, and Bombardier hasn’t received a patent from the US Patent and Trademark Office yet. Likely unable to get past the prior art for other leaning trike designs as a whole, Bombardier’s patent focuses on the linkage for the steering mechanism, and how to overcome some of the deficiencies in current designs. Diving into the claims of the patent, Bombardier actually has a pretty clever way of having the Spyder’s frame lean and not lean under the right circumstances, which should make for a more refined three-wheeled leaning chassis.

Math can be tough sometimes, especially when it comes to counting, so we can understand the confusion surrounding the news that Erik Buell has recently been awarded a patent for a design that incorporates a motorcycle exhaust system inside the swingarm of the bike (now that’s some engineering). However we have the unpleasant responsibility of saying that this patent is not in fact owned by Erik Buell and Erik Buell Racing, as the filing date and patent assignee information were clearly over-looked by early reports on Buell’s patent.

While the patent was published on October 28, 2010, its was filed by Buell last year (April 24, 2010), well before Harley-Davidson closed the company, and while Erik Buell still worked as a Harley-Davidson employee. As such, the patent is assigned to the Buell Motorcycle Company, whose intellectual property is still owned by Harley-Davidson.

Mission Motors is teasing the silhouette of its new Mission R race bike, which is set to go racing in 2011. While details are scarce on the Mission R’s technical aspects, we’ve been told that the new design looks very promising, and is more palatable visually to a larger audience than the original Mission One. It doesn’t take much for us to guess some aspects of the Mission R though, as Mission Motors was on-hand for Specialty Equipment Marketing Association show (SEMA) this week (you know that other industry trade show that’s going on), with a bevy of announcements.

The most prominent piece of news from the San Franciscan-based company is that it is making available its proprietary electric drive system, which will come from a special group inside the company, dubbed MissionEVT, which is focused on bringing EV tech to other companies and applications beyond motorcycles.