Pull Rods - Honda Patent Application

[TZ250]

Pull rods? :dunno:

http://www.google.com/patents/US7004132

[Black Horse]

This patent/idea has been around for at least ten years. Basically, instead of the "push" rods activating the rocker arm to open the valves - imagine the pushrods attached to the cam and to the end of the rocker arm much like a piston rod to a crankshaft so that as the cam "pulls" the rod downwards it also pulls the rocker arm downwards opening the valve. In theory this would reduce tolerances and "slop" in the valvetrain actuation as well as helping to eliminate the dreaded valve float at high rpms.

In my head, the next better step would be to directly attach the valves to an overhead camshaft (call it a valve crankshaft) via. this same rod configuration (and for those engineers amoung us - you should know that this is impractical due to the steep actuating slopes and requirements.)

Actually a pretty cool, thinking outside of the box idea. Whether it ever makes it to production long term, only time will tell.