It's a question as old as the modern-day Harley-Davidson: How do you set your bike apart from the hordes of other Harleys out there? In the recent past the Motor Company has been churning out a high number of motorcycles on an annual basis, making it even tougher for owners to set their bikes apart from the rest. Sure, there are multiple families of bikes manufactured, each with various models in any particular category. As great as those choices may be, you can still end up with a motorcycle that has similar lines and styling to other incarnations of a particular family of motorcycle.
So what's a guy to do? You could begin by opening up Harley's mammoth phone book-sized Parts and Accessories Catalog and perusing its 900 pages, trying to find that elusive combination of parts that look really great together. If your take on that option is less than enthusiastic, you could riffle through any one of the many catalogs or web pages supplied by numerous parts distributors or aftermarket manufactures out there. The next route many consider is bringing their bike to a custom builder and letting him have his way with a torch, die grinder, and a welder. Whichever way you decide to go, your options will always be limited by your budget. The more custom you go, the more it will cost you in the end. It's been said that a Harley-Davidson is just a down payment on the accessories, and in many cases that's not all that far from the truth.
Not long ago, Roland Sands, V.P. of R&D and design at Performance Machine (PM) and president of Roland Sands Designs (RSD), found himself pondering this very dilemma. Considering that Roland has the entire PM R&D department at his fingertips, you might be asking yourself how a guy like this could have a problem customizing a stock Softail. That wasn't the issue for Roland. What he was looking to accomplish was to assemble a number of different components that could be offered as kits to riders, allowing them the ability to radically change the appearance of their Softails. Up until the past few years, Harley's Softail line easily outsold any other family of bikes, and Roland knew all too well how many riders were looking for more options when it came to changing the appearance of their bikes. Instead of just coming out with a new parts line, Roland's idea was to offer different kits that would allow the rider to modify the look of a bike from simple to extreme. This would give the bike owner the ability to tailor the final look of the bike based on both styling and budget.
While we would like to believe that Roland did all of this out of the goodness of his heart, he did have a bit of an ulterior motive. You see, Roland loves to ride Softails, but when you're a guy who designs some of the most beautiful parts for the custom V-Twin industry, you can't just ride around on a stock Softail. Most of the items you see on this bike were inspired by many of the plain-Jane bikes Roland had found himself riding over the years.
Inspiration for this particular project (known as "Vintage") came from another Roland-built bike that goes by the name of "El Borracho." Back in the spring of 2004, Roland and PM R&D guru Todd Silicato built a bike to show off a bunch of the PM componentry that was available at the time. You may have seen the bike at any number of shows since the summer of 2004. Additionally, the bike was featured in our sister publication, HOT ROD BIKES (now titled HOT ROD'S BIKEWORKS). This bike was basically a Twin Cam Softail on which Roland performed a makeover by altering the sheetmetal, seat, bars, swingarm, and rear tire. These alterations gave the bike a completely different look from the one the bike had been born with, all while retaining the stock H-D frame and driveline-an important consideration when pondering any alterations. El Borracho didn't stop there; it was outfitted with numerous PM and aftermarket items, making the bike a true custom.
In addition to changing the look of a bike with the kits, Roland's goal was to come up with an assortment of parts designed to replace many of the stock components. Not wanting to mess with its reliability, Roland kept the driveline stock with only a few exceptions. Those included the addition of RSD's billet cam and rocker covers, and the transmission parts necessary to facilitate the use of PM's Phatail kit.