The nice thing about building a bike for Silvia as opposed to building it for a paying customer was that Silvia gave him complete artistic license with the bike-almost too much artistic license. Customers usually have what they want in their head, and builders try to please them even if it isn't their particular taste. With this bike, Roman had ideas he had been saving up for years that finally became reality because time was no object. He wanted to put his best foot forward and really wow the public and his wife with a not-so-ordinary bobber.
The powerplant was going to be an Evo built up by John Koehnle from a significant pile of stock H-D parts. It has 80 inches of displacement with Ultima cases but has a few hidden surprises, so it gives a little more than the usual get-up-and-go. It has J&E Performance pistons, an Andrews cam, JIMS lifters, and an S&S G carb for plenty of power to get this little bobber moving. The tranny is a stock H-D matched up with an R-Max clutch and primary. The clutch was set up to accept a foot clutch, and the shifting was going to be a jockey-shift setup. At this point it became fairly clear that this bike was not only being built by Roman, but for him as well. Silvia could ride a jockey shift, but it wouldn't be her choice. The bike started to come together; there were a few things that Roman just didn't want to compromise on because of the coolness factor, and the jockey shift was one of them. He realized that this bike was as much for him as it was for his wife, and so he went all out on the hand fabrication, since he knew this was going to be a bike that was meant for riding. The bike came together slowly, with ideas being squeezed in between paying customers. In the end, Roman was proud of his work and was psyched to see Silvia go out and take it for a spin. Since that time, Roman has put the majority of the miles on it and has taken quite a liking to it. It looks as if he's going to have to build another bike for his wife.
Roman has his own TV show on the SPEED Channel called American Biker, where he will build 13 bikes over a 13-episode series for companies such as the Dallas Mavericks, Crown Royal, and the World Series of Poker. The cool thing about it is that the bikes aren't going to be theme bikes for the companies commissioning them; they're going to be the ground-up customs that Roman is known for-and which happen to be comfortable, cool rides.