By Larry Lawrence

The King of the AMA Battle of the Twins (BOTT) competition in the mid-1980s was Gene Church riding a Don Tilley-built Harley-Davidson XR1000 dubbed Lucifer’s Hammer. It may very well have been the fastest Harley-Davidson road racing machine ever to hit the track.

Church rode Lucifer’s Hammer to three BOTT titles in 1984-86. The shy North Carolinian was an unlikely champion in the popular road racing championship. First of all Church was a flat tracker and rarely road raced before going up against experienced road racers like Jimmy Adamo, Harry Klinzmann, David Roper, Marco Lucchinelli and Dale Quarterley.

Perhaps even more unlikely a championship winner was the bike on which Church rode. Lucifer’s Hammer was aptly named. It came straight out of the inferno of factory Harley-Davidson rider Mark Brelsford’s fiery crash at Daytona in 1973. Brelsford, the 1972 AMA Grand National Champion had a rough start to the 1973 season when he hit Larry Darr’s slowed bike at Daytona International Speedway’s high-speed infield kink. The impact resulted in Brelsford’s factory Harley going up in a ball of flame. The horrendous crash was captured on film by a Daytona Beach News-Journal photographer. The fiery crash photo became famous on magazine covers and posters.

The factory XR racer of Brelsford’s sat in mothballs for nearly 10 years at the Harley-Davidson factory in Milwaukee. Then in the early 1980s a group of Florida club racers convinced Jim France to run a race during Bike Week for twin-cylinder machines called Battle of the Twins. In 1982 the BOTT became the fourth road racing class at AMA nationals joining Formula One, Superbike and 250 Grand Prix.

A year later Harley-Davidson racing boss Dick O’Brien thought it might be a good idea to rebuild Brelsford’s XR, punch it out to 1000cc and enter Jay Springsteen in the Ducati dominated class. In March of ’83 Springer won the Daytona Battle of the Twins round over Adamo and Brit Tony Rutter, both Ducati mounted.

With Springsteen turning his attention back to the Grand Nationals, his winning BOTT Harley went back into storage.

Meanwhile Gene Church was cleaning up in the stock class of the Battle of the Twins (a predecessor to the Harley-Davidson 883 Sportster Series) on a Don Tilley Harley. Tilley was surprised to get a 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 remembers. “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 Lucifer’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 stories about how it was named, but the name stuck.

“I think part of it was because we had a Church riding Lucifer’s bike.”

O’Brien was a little skeptical when he heard that Tilley planned on having Church as the rider. He was after all a flat tracker with very little road racing experience. But Tilley stuck to his guns believing that young Church could race anything. He was right. Church won the BOTT in his debut on Lucifer’s Hammer in the October AMA Pro-Am National at Daytona.

Church came back in earnest in the 1984 season and opened with a win at Daytona. He went on to score victories at Sears Point and Mid-Ohio to win his first Battle of the Twins Championship in his first full season over Jimmy Adamo and Devin Battley.

Church have proven to be a fast learner on the road racing circuits of America and Brelsford’s resurrected machine still had a lot of life left in it.

As the 1985 season dawned, Church sensed that the competition was going to be a lot tougher. In an interview before Daytona that year Church said in his thick North Carolina drawl, “There’s a lot of mighty good riders competing in the Twins class. I think we’ll win Daytona, but everything’s got to be just right. This year will be a real challenge.”

Adamo’s program stepped up that year with him riding a factory Cagiva. And the series had African-American rider John Williams on the Dale Newton-tuned Ducati factory-backed machines. And then there was British born veteran Malcolme Tunstall on one of his trick Ducatis.

In the face of all the serious challengers in 1985 Church and Tilley hit their stride. Church won Daytona for a second straight year and went on to have his best season in the class, earning a career-best five wins to dominate that year’s title chase.

In 1986 former 500cc GP World Champion Marco Lucchinelli came to Daytona on a factory Ducati special. When radar recorded Lucifer’s Hammer at 156 mph on Daytona’s tri-oval the Ducati factory personnel were impressed.

“They came over to me to congratulate me on having a bike that would go that fast,” Tilley recalls. “I told them 156 wasn’t nothin’. I told them something was wrong with the bike and it could go a lot faster. They walked away laughin’ about it. They didn’t believe me.

“I found out one of the carbs was messed up. I fixed it and the bike went out and did 170 mph. The guys from Ducati jaws dropped when they saw that.”

Lucchinelli won the race on the strength of his riding skill, but Tilley had shown the Italian factory that an early 1970s Harley with the right kind of tuning could run with Italy’s state-of-the-art desmo twin.

The 1986 season proved to be the tightest yet in BOTT. Church won four races, to Adamo’s two. Lucchinelli came back after his Daytona triumph and won at Laguna Seca, but back then running on an FIM license he earned no AMA points. Church took the championship by a scant two points over Adamo. It would be his last.

In 1987 the team switched to a revolutionary chassis designed by Eric Buell. In spite of the advantages it offered over the old Harley chassis, the new bike had a number of issues such as rear shocks blowing out. Church broke his collarbone at Daytona, and after that riding injured, he went from champion to not being able to find the podium that season. Church’s three year run atop the standings was over.

Scott Parker sat in for Church at Daytona and finished third in one of his rare road racing appearances. Chris Carr got his first taste of road racing on the bike later that summer at on oppressively hot national in Memphis.

“Carr was so small he’d blow by everybody down that long straight at Memphis,” Tilley recalls. “But he didn’t have much pavement experience and they all got back by him in the turns.”

Carr finished a credible fifth.

Harley-Davidson asked Tilley to take what was supposed to be a one-year hiatus from racing while they developed their new Superbike. Lucifer’s Hammer made a final appearance in 1988 where Church got 13th at Laguna Seca.

“The Harley Superbike took a lot longer to develop than they thought,” Tilley said. “The original plan was I was supposed to get one of the first VRs when they were ready, but Harley got a new racing manager and all that stuff was forgotten.”

In the 1990s Tilley finally did get a chance with Harley’s VR and he beat the factory most of the time.

He said Harley officials congratulated him one year at Daytona for getting 157 mph out of his VR. “I told them it was disappointing,” Tilley says with a laugh. “They asked why and I told them because 10 years earlier I got 170 mph out of one of the old pushrod engines.”

Tilley continues to build race bikes out of his Statesville shop, now primarily for drag racing. Church too works at a motorcycle performance shop not far away. The relationship between Tilley, Church and a Harley that escaped from the gates of hell will forever be one on the most unique stories in AMA racing lore.

Lucifer’s Hammer was not just a motorcycle with the coolest name of all time, it was also Harley-Davidson’s last great road racing machine.