Buying his ’94 Softail Springer FXSTS was a little traumatic for Shawn Ohler. First of all, the original owners were still madly in love with it. “It was their baby, but they were relocating, and didn’t have the space to take it,” Shawn explained. When he bought it, it was aqua pearl with a tall, padded sissy bar. Leather braided levers with foot long tassels hung off of the 13” apes. “Those tassels gave me a pretty good whipping,” Shawn laughed. The owners had painted their names on each side of the gas tanks. “They had spent a lot of time on the bike– many trips to Sturgis,” Shawn said. “I think the bike had a little over 20,000 miles at the time. I remember his wife just crying her eyes out when we left with it.”

As soon as Shawn got the bike home, he laid it down in the yard. “Nice, huh?” he laughed. The second thing he did was to cut those tassels down to a length that wouldn’t beat him to death when he rode. He took some rubbing compound and removed the previous owners’ names. “It got old, being called Gary all the time.” He bought a lowering kit, removed the sissy bar, and replaced the pillow top seat, which he said was so huge that he couldn’t even touch the ground when he sat on it. “It had to go. I replaced it with a Saddlemen LoBoy studded seat,” he said. And for the next 8 years, that’s all the modifications he made. The thing that got him back into the customization mode was nothing other than good old sibling rivalry.

“My brother bought a bike,” Shawn said. “It was the same as mine—a ’96, but it was dark red and it looked brand new. Right after that, my brother-in-law bought an ’03 Anniversary Springer, and again, it looked brand new. I was backed up against the wall. I felt like I couldn’t simply sit back and be outdone by these pretty bikes.” And so, the competition began.

He didn’t have the desire or the funds to make the bike look brand new. “I like everything old school,” Shawn explained. “My motorcycle, my cars, my music—I’ve been in a band called 65 Reissue for about 10 years. We’re some hardcore honky-tonkers.”

Shawn’s fond of old, Hardtail Bobbers. “The more stripped down the better—no rake necessary,” he said. “I didn’t have the money to go buy what I wanted, and I didn’t want something that someone else had created in their own mind.” He also says that he didn’t have the knowhow to build one from the ground up. “I decided it would be a good learning experience to just use what I had and see how close I could get to making an old school Bobber out of my Harley Softail. It didn’t have to be pretty, just custom—and low. Rockabilly retro low with show.”

The rebuild started in Shawn’s garage, where he disassembled the bike, and then he moved the operation to Smith Cycle Center in Green Forest, Arkansas. “That’s where we did most of the fabrication,” he said. “We did mock ups. We added new parts, and took away anything that wasn’t needed. “When the paint and bodywork was complete, they trailered the bike and took it to mechanic and friend Jon Heathcock’s garage for the re-assembly.

He changed the seat again, this time to a spring solo. He added whitewall tires, and discovered that the front fender just didn’t look good with them. “Off it came,” Shawn said. The rear fender wasn’t right either. “That aqua pearl paint was just too pretty, and that was a problem. I decided to just start over.” For a little over $100, he found a strutless fender, and for $80 he found some curved, old style Fat Bob tanks. Both needed a lot of bodywork, which was provided by K&N Paint and Body in Green Forest, Arkansas.

He replaced the apes with a Superbar turned upside down. “Trying to find a bar with enough space to clear the risers was a challenge,” Shawn said. “I finally tracked a set down on Ebay for $25.”

A lot of bike owners will describe the process of customization as trouble-free. Shawn, says that he’s a bit of a temperamental perfectionist, and describes his differently: , “EVERYTHING was a problem, everything took some tweaking. Mounting the gas tanks, which didn’t fit the frame. The rear fender, which originally looked like it had been welded by a blind man. I almost had a stroke trying to install the oil tank. Even with the header wrap, the pipes were so hot it would melt my wife’s flip flops, so we had to add a little chrome cover to the pipe.” Turning that handle bar was initially a problem (“It kept hitting the tank”), and the carb was giving him fits, causing the bike to jump and bump and cut out. He had the Softail struts removed and Jon Heathcock fabricated some solid, adjustable ones. “It basically runs rigid now,” Shawn said. “Not your typical Hardtail, but a Hardtail nonetheless.”

Mike Koster of K & N Paint and Body in Green Forest, Arkansas painted the tins using Hot Rod satin black paint with flat white inserts. Kelsey Dum, of Dum Designs hand painted the pinstripes. Ulys Youngblood of Youngblood MC helped work some kinks out, and has kept the bike running smoothly since the build. Jon Heathcock was Shawn’s technical guru on the entire build. “He provided a wealth of knowledge and craftsmanship. I’m a detail guy, and I come up with a lot of ideas on the fly. Jon had the ability to figure out how to do a lot of it, and the experience to reel me in when something just wouldn’t work.”

Reactions to the Springer vary (“People either love it or they hate it”) but it always gets attention. It fits Shawn and his rockabilly lifestyle perfectly, and he often uses it to transport his Fender Telecaster guitar.

Among both Shawn’s and the bike’s biggest fans is his wife, Tracey. “I had a lot of encouragement from her. She helped figure out the colors, and being a big Waylon Jennings fan, she named it ‘Slow Rollin’ Low,’ after one of his songs, which I think is pretty fitting,” Shawn said. “It’s not a hot rod by any means, but we still roll low.”