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ran their plugs, they'd give me 50 dollars. They ran pretty good for about five laps and then the bike went on one cylinder and Jimmy Odom and Mark Brelsford caught and passed me and I ended up third." Wilburn wanted to turn Pro since his increasing racing schedule was starting to get ex- pensive. Triumph's race manager Pete Coleman agreed to help, but after turning Expert in 1966, Wilburn mostly confined his rac- ing to the West Coast. Being a family man and having a nine-to- five job as a rocket-motor builder on Edwards Air Force Base meant chasing the Grand Nation- als wasn't a realistic possibility. He ran some short tracks, but TT racing was his specialty. He also gained a reputation as a great builder during this time. At a time when Skip Van Leeuwen was between rides, he rode Wilburn's Triumphs and won with them. When asked to compare the factory Triumphs to Wilburn's machine, Van Leeuwen had good things to say. "Believe it or not, it was a step up riding Larry's bike," he says. "He was a racer and knew exactly how to set the bike up. The suspension was perfect and little things like the handle- bars being in the right place, the shift lever set up just right so you could get your boot under it. To me he was one of the top three tuners in the business." Wilburn's brightest moment as a racer came in July of 1969 in the Ascot TT Grand 50-lap National in which he rode his 650cc Triumph Twin TT Special. It was there that he finished sec- ond to Mark Brelsford (in Brels- ford's first National win). "It was a pretty long race, and I didn't know what position I was in," Wilburn says. "I knew I was midpack or maybe better. I started driving harder and harder and remember passing some of the top guys. I passed Nixon, Markel and Romero. That really pumped me up, and I knew after passing those guys that I had to be running up front somewhere. I got to where I could see one guy way up there when I came on the front straightaway. Pretty soon the checkered flag came out and they came over and told me I got second to Mark Brels- ford, who was riding what they called "Goliath"—the big factory Harley. "It was big payday: I made $875," Wilburn laughs. After his stellar Ascot perfor- mance, everyone told Wilburn that he should ride the entire Grand National Championship. So that's what he planned to do in 1970. But things went awry at the first race in the Houston Astrodome. At the Houston TT National things started fine enough for Wilburn. He did well in qualify- ing and his heat race, earning a front-row start. In the National, Wilburn said he was keeping an eye on Dick Mann and Mert Law- will, who were just ahead of him, when a rider crashed, giving Wilburn no place to go. "I hit him and went down," he said. "Then a rider behind me crashed into me and broke some ribs off my back. That ended my racing career." As Wilburn recuperated, Van Leeuwen rode his bike. That started Wilburn's career as a race tuner—something he con- tinues to this day. Tom Horton, who won Junior Nationals on Wilburn's bike before getting a factory Yamaha ride in the early '70s, is a leading AHRMA racer today on Wilburn-built Triumphs. Wilburn continued to ride in the desert around his home in Rosamond, California well into his 70s. He remained loyal to Triumph and continued to be a go-to guy when it came to mak- ing the vintage British machines run like they should. Wilburn was inducted into the Trailblazers Hall of Fame in 2010. Sadly, on March 4, 2013, Wilburn passed away in an off-road motor- cycle accident in Arizona. CN This Archives edition is reprinted from the March 4, 2009, issue. CN has hundreds of past Archives editions in our files, too many des- tined to be archives themselves. So, to prevent that from happen- ing, in the future, we will be revisit- ing past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road. -Editor CN III ARCHIVES P120 Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives