Veteran NHRA Pro Stock racer Larry Morgan had plenty of success during his driving career.

These days, Morgan is building Pro Stock Motorcycle engines for Team Liberty with drivers world champion Angelle Sampey and Cory Reed.

“Last year, Jim Whiteley asked me if I could help him on cylinder heads because he knew I’d done Hector (Arana’s) stuff. And I said ‘yeah, I’ll do your heads.’ So I did a set of heads and they kept blowing engines up. Chris Rivas was doing it with him. Chris Rivas was working on the engines. Now keep in mind this was a whole new development deal with Victory. Nobody had done any development work. They just took whatever they had and that’s what they tried to race with. But they weren’t very successful they just kept blowing engines up. They kept doing so much that Jim finally called me up and said ‘would you be interested in doing this?’ And I told him I would. I went down and looked at stuff and it was so tore up. It had been blown up so bad that I said “this is gonna be a pretty good job.” So I took it on and Dave Elk who worked with me for 17 years and worked with Hector for a couple years.”

Now, Morgan, his son, Nick and Elk do the engine stuff for the Victory bikes ridden by Reed and Sampey. The team is running S&S engines.

“Yeah, I plan on doing it (the whole season),” Morgan said. “I took a real liking to Cory and I want to help him as much as I can.”

Morgan acknowledged this is a work in progress.

“We have three different designs of engines and we don’t know which one is the best,” Morgan said. “And, we weren’t able to work together to figure that out and now we’re going to have to work together.”

Morgan has more than his fair share of memories as a drivers, especially his 2015 victory at the Mile-High Nationals came against Allen Johnson. The two had a memorable burn down before finally staging.

“I miss that part,” Morgan said. “I don’t miss spending a million dollars a year (in Pro Stock). That car is out of control. Do I miss that class? Yes. Will I race again? Absolutely. I told Jim (Whiteley) until they get these bikes running real good I’m not interested in racing.”

Morgan knows firsthand the cost of racing is driving competitors away from the sport.

“I just like to race and you can’t make it to where it’s so expensive that it takes the fun away and that’s what’s happening up here,” Morgan said. “When Schumacher and Force and Kallita go, what’s going happen? You know what’s going to happen. We can’t afford to race this stuff. We’re fortunate enough that we’ve got a guy that’s interested in doing what we do here. Jim’s (Whiteley) a good guy.”