Cycle News

VOL. 51 ISSUE 26 JULY 1, 2014 P119 resulted in a remarkable four AMA Grand National Championships in a row for Resweber from 1958 through 1961. Resweber's four titles was a record in AMA Grand National racing that would last for nearly 40 years. Resweber and his wife left Texas and temporarily moved in with the Berndts until he got settled so he could be more centrally located to the AMA Grand National circuit. Racing was a family affair for the Berndts. Ralph's wife was very involved, helping tear down motors and clean parts. She also sewed together torn racing leathers. Their five children all had tasks to perform as well, gathering bike stands, rolling out tires and finding oil filter covers so every- thing could be readied to pack into the motorcycle trailer. Berndt's daughter, Heidi, even learned the fine art of painting number plates from NASCAR legend Red Vogt, whose home was on the back straight of Daytona International Speedway. Resweber was Berndt's winningest rider, but he also helped George Roeder come within a single point of winning the AMA Grand National Cham- pionship in 1963. Tony Murguia also won an AMA National Road Race in Indianapolis on a Ralph Berndt-tuned Harley-Davidson in 1962 and many other riders raced bikes with engines built by Ber- ndt during the 1960s. Berndt was one of the first mechanics to keep extensive notes on each track. Over the years, he learned to customize a motor's power curve, or ex- actly what angle to cut a tire specifically for a track - based on his pages of notes. He also learned to build frames that could maximize aerodynamics for individual riders based on their height and weight. Berndt's philosophy in racing wasn't based so much on beating other competitors, but finding perfection in his own machines. His bikes were successful in dirt track racing as well as road racing. He even had a major hand in preparing a world speed record Harley-Davidson ridden by George Roeder at the Bonneville Salt Flats. Powered by a Harley-Davidson 250cc Sprint motor, a streamliner prepared by Berndt was piloted to a record speed of 177.225 mph by Roeder at the Salt Flats in 1965. In 1974 the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was expanding and asked Harley-Davidson if it had a 1930s era racer that could be put on display. Sur- prisingly Milwaukee didn't have anything on hand so a search was made for a racing machine from that era. A rough frame was found in Chicago and it was Berndt who donated a mint "peashooter" engine so the bike could be completed. Berndt worked in Harley-Davidson's racing department and later in the company's research and development department until 1978 when he retired and turned his focus to his hobby of exper- imental aircraft. During his 30-plus years at the company, he passed on to many other engineers at Harley-Davidson his self-taught craft. One of the tuners he mentored was a young Bill Werner, who tuned for Scott Parker, the rider to break Carroll Resweber's AMA Grand National record of four straight titles. In retirement Berndt won engineering awards for designing a new type of retractable landing gear for experimental aircraft. Berndt was modest about his success in build- ing championship-winning motorcycles. He qui- etly worked behind the scenes while his riders garnered the praise. Still, the people inside rac- ing knew how significant Berndt's contributions to the sport were. Berndt died in September of 1992. Several of his motorcycles and some of his machining equipment live on and have been preserved at the Wheels Through Time Museum in Maggie Val- ley, North Carolina. Berndt was posthumously inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2005. CN HARLEY-DAVIDSON'S MAN BEHIND THE SCENES Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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