When I first saw the picture above I wasn’t aware that the bike had any rear suspension and as such, I set about hunting for the “after” photograph that would have shown a bent frame, a busted rear tire and a rider with a sore man-patch.
Well it turns out the bike does have a spring in the rear, Roland Sands Design took the newish Harley-Davidson Blackline Softail and built the bike that the designers at Harley would have built, if they didn’t have to answer to middle management and bean counters.
Using the Harley-Davidson WR Flat Head as inspiration (picture below), they stripped off all of the superfluous nonsense, added some chunky flat-tracker tires, fork-boots to keep the dirt out of the shiny bits, a skid plate, new engine and air-filter covers, new carbon fenders front and rear, a new pipe, a custom fork brace, custom handlebars, a custom leather seat and a slew of other RSD bespoke parts.
Before offering the bike for sale RSD decided to take it out for a day in the dirt, they shared the photos and I thought some of you might get a kick from seeing a 400+ pound Harley get flogged in the gravel. Click here to view the full photo set, or scroll down for the highlights.
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
