VOL. 51 ISSUE 35 SEPTEMBER 3, 2014 P23
DON TILLEY, 1936-2014
D
on Tilley, the legendary race tuner and Til-
ley Harley-Davidson owner from Statesville,
North Carolina, died on Friday, August 29 from
injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident on
the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville, ac-
cording to newspaper reports and his dealer-
ship's website. He was 78. It was also reported
that Tilley's wife, Robinette, was riding with her
husband and was critically injured when their
motorcycle left the parkway at mile post 394
in Buncombe County, according to U.S. park
rangers.
Tilley was a well-known personality in mo-
torcycle racing. He was involved in all forms of
racing from motocross, to flat track to drag rac-
ing, but he is perhaps best known for the champi-
onships he earned as tuner of Lucifer's Hammer,
an ex-factory Harley-Davidson XR1000, that Gene
Church rode to three consecutive AMA Battle of
the Twins Championships in the mid-1980s.
Tilley was running a bike in the Stock class of
Battle of the Twins with Church when he got a sur-
prise call from Milwaukee in the summer of '83.
"Dick O'Brien called me and asked me if I'd like
to take Lucifer's Hammer and see what I could do
with it," Tilley said in a 2011 interview. "I said 'I'd love
to.' HOG [Harley Owner Group] told me they would
sponsor it, and it wasn't much let me tell you. That's
when HOG just got started.
"I went to Milwaukee and got the bike, brought it
back to my shop and did some modifications to the
engine. We painted it tan and brown. I had a Luci-
fer's Hammer decal made and put it on the bike. It
was Dick O'Brien's wife who named it. Some said it
was named after a comet. There's two or three sto-
ries about how it was named, but the name stuck. I
think part of it was because we had a Church riding
Lucifer's bike."
The pairing of Church on Tilley's machine made
both of them all-time legends in Battle of the Twins
racing.
Tilly's fame continued to surge in the early 1990s
when he teamed with rider Scott Zampach in the
Harley-Davidson 883 Series. Together they domi-
nated the class, winning three National Champion-
ships.
Tilley went on to run a Harley-Davidson satellite
Superbike team, which featured Scott Zampach
and later Tripp Nobles as riders. Tilley had success
in the Pro Thunder class with rider Shawn Higbee.
Tilley also backed a championship-winning drag
racing team featuring a Harley-Davidson V-Rod rid-
den by Nobles.
His dealership grew from modest beginnings in
1972 to the point where he owned two large dealer-
ships, one in Statesville and the other in Salisbury,
North Carolina.
"He and Robinette were coming back from
Nashville and a dealer meeting," said Tilley's for-
mer rider Gene Church. "It's a sad day. I don't think
I knew anyone who liked motorcycles and riding
Harley-Davidsons as much as he did. He really was
responsible for the success I had. He stepped up
for me to be the rider for his Battle of the Twins
team even though I was nothing, but a struggling
dirt tracker at the time."
Larry Lawrence
Don Tilley was killed and his wife Robinette was critically
injured in a motorcycle crash on Friday in North Carolina.
