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VOLUME 56 ISSUE 32 AUGUST 13, 2019 P129 The Norton seemed as good as anything." To start his Norton project in the early '70s, Wood bought a wrecked Commando for $200. His first Norton flat tracker was a unique creation with a one-piece tank/seat/tail section. At Ascot, Eddie Mulder set fast qualifying time on the machine, so Wood knew he was on the right track. The hardest thing was keeping the high-strung Norton motor from blowing up. Wood's white and powder blue-colored Nor- ton was so eye-catching that it prompted Jody Nicholas to say, "The machine was so beautifully constructed. I almost felt guilty getting it dirty!" Gradually Wood dialed a next- generation design by the mid- 1970s, and he called it the "big- tube" Norton. The frame tubes doubled as the oil tank. While the frame, with its three-inch diameter tubing, looked massive, the tubing itself was incredibly thin (.049-inch thickness) mak- ing the Norton incredibly light. The engine was mounted to the frame by way of beefy steel pads that protect the fragile frame by absorbing the pounding of the big vertical-twin engine. The big-tube was a success. Rob Morrison rode the bike to the Ascot season title in '74. Morri- son earned a Norton factory ride for his performance, and Wood brought in Alex "Jorgy" Jorgensen to replace him. It was a seamless transition. Like Morrison before him, Jorgy took the Ascot track title in 1975 and '76. While the Ascot races proved fruitful, the one thing that eluded Wood was a win at the national level. The problem for Wood and his crew was keeping the Norton engine reliable enough. They could get about 78 horsepower with the newer short-stroke mo- tor. Anything more than that and the engines became grenades. If he couldn't get any more power, Wood knew his only hope of running with the factory Harleys and Yamahas was to make his bike lighter. That prompted the third-generation Norton that Wood called "The Lightweight." Amazingly, Wood managed to get his racing Norton down to 268 pounds, about 40 pounds lighter than a Harley XR750. With the light weight, Jorgensen began being a more consistent threat at the nationals. Finally, everything fell into place at the Ascot AMA Grand National in May of 1978. Besides the ultra-light- weight of the Norton, Wood made a last-minute, oddball tire selection by putting a Carlisle Arrow on the rear. Wood recalled, "Jorgy didn't think it was a good idea, but the way the track surface was that night, I figured it had to work." Wood's call was brilliant. Jorgy dominated the national that night. It was a breakthrough win that solidified Wood's reputation as one of the leading builders in the country. It proved to be the final national ever won by a Norton. Wood went on to design the state-of-the-art short track ma- chine with the Wood-Rotax. The bike was so dominant after being launched in 1983, that the AMA 600cc National Dirt Track class practically became a Wood-Rotax spec class. It was so good that Harley-Davidson licensed the right to use the Wood-Rotax, re-badged it, painted it orange and black, and called a Harley-Davidson. "That was one of the proud- est moments when dad and his team were converting those bikes into Harley-Davidsons," said Ron Jr. "There are pictures that have never been published of my dad with the Wood-Rotax in various stages being made into a Harley. He had a huge smile on his face." Wood even branched out into road racing in the 1980s with the building of the Wood-Rotax SJ676. But ultimately Wood's first love was flat track, and he continued for the rest of his life building his unique creations. One of his later bikes was a BMW-based flat tracker. Wood finally seemed to hit a wall for years with the devel- opment of that bike, but then, with Dalton Gauthier at the controls, the Wood BMW finally won the American Flat Track AFT2 Nation- al at the Arizona Mile in 2016. Looking at an 87-year-old Wood standing beside Gauthier on the podium that day in Phoenix, his trademark smile was beaming ear-to-ear. Ron was in his element and loved every minute of it. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives