JAG410 

Back story and before pictures are here: https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...4th-Romic-Bike





















When I got the decals from Ray's widow, she included this decal of Ray's signature. Some customers would ask Ray to sign their bikes and after he passed away, his son scanned his signature and made it into a decal. One of my favorite parts of finished product.

Maiden voyage in the morning, I'm excited.

SteveSGP

Gorgeous bike, you did a fantastic job on it!

auchencrow

Oh man that is nice. Well worth the wait.

Such a lovely green machine!

ColonelJLloyd 

Well done! Classy machine.

RobbieTunes

I'd be up all night just waiting to ride it. Super clean, super colors.
Everything goes together very, very well. Nothing out of place.

Chris W.

Wow!!! That Sir is a beautiful bike!

Cheers,
Chris

Ed in Toronto

Sweet looking bike

JAG410 

Thanks! I was worried that the gold housing and shellac'd bars would be over the top, but I think they turned out OK in the end. It'll be hard to sleep tonight as I wonder what destination to ride it to. The weather should be perfect!

kimberlein

Nicely done!!! It's gorgeous!

gomango

It was fun chatting with you about this Romic at the swap.

I am happy for you, and all of your efforts really paid dividends.

Maybe you can bring her down for a spring C&V ride.

vjp

Looks nice!

I think that there is a little revisionist history on the Romic tribute site. To build that number of bikes he would have had to build over a bike a day, every day, for 40 years. Maybe he sold 14,000 + bikes over 40 years but I bet most of them were made overseas. I have seen a Romic built by the man and it is quite different than yours as far as lug details.

balindamood

Very, very nice. I like the pictures. My wife lived in Moorhead 20 years ago for a while, and we look at the pictures trying to identify the streets.

In reference to the comment above, all Romics were made in Houston, although Ray made only a small percentage of them overall. Earlier bikes he had mroe of a hand in, but he seemed to do more of the painting as time went on.

vjp

So, Romic built 14,000 bikes in his shop? One a day for 40 years? I find that incredibly hard to believe, especially since you hardly ever see any.

vjp

Maybe it's a typo and its 1,400 over 40 years?

balindamood

Do not know how many Romics where made over the 20-25 years they were produced. All I know is that they were all produced in Houston, and that there were any number of people building bikes there. I expect that Ray would have built more of them himself early on, but there were 10-20 people working there for some time. Trek was making several thousand bikes annually with a similar staff in the firSt few years, and I would also note that pre-1980 Treks are not all that common either.

noglider 

Tastefully done!

mudboy

Perfect.

beech333

I shared some emails with his widow about a year ago. There is a flaw in the serial numbers, so you cannot judge how many he made based on the numbers. They were all made in house.

I wish mine looked as good as yours, but it was poorly rattle-canned before I got it. I have another bike in need of a proper repaint, so I might have to pursue a proper restoration on mine now.

poprad

Gorgeous build OP. Really classy, all the details look "right" on this one. Beautiful paint enhanced by a clean and understated build. Congrats.

photogravity

Nicely done, JAG410! I really like the way this came together.

Are you planning on taking the bike to Cirque in June? It seems since the theme this year is "American Bicycles and American Bicycle Builders" it would be a great opportunity to show the bike.

devinfan

Now that's a bike put together with some serious TLC. Fantastic.

JAG410 

Cirque is too far away, would be nice though! I'll add that event to my bucket list.

There is definitely a discrepancy about the number of bikes built by Romic (all in Houston, BTW). Somewhere an extra digit was added to the serial numbers, so the actual number built is probably under 2000. No one knows for sure. Many of them were track bikes for local area racers. There are even some NOS ones still for sale at Daniel Boone Cycles in Texas. There certainly aren't many of these early ones around anymore, so I'm pleased to bring this one back to life.

balindamood

OK. This "how many Romics are there?" question is bugging me. I agree, that 14000 is not likely. I did some research on Rich Pinder's site, plus I have kept a short log of serial #'s as Romics show up on here and Ebay. Based upon the assumption that the sequential serial number sequence went from <XXX><random letter><date> to 1<XXX><date> about January 1976, and that Romics sold after 1996 (after Ray's death) were largely, but entirely, from old stock, I get a total of 5724 bikes built, not 14,000+. The logic is based upon the following:

The original serial number sequence seemed to hold through the end of 1975 (Rich Pinder's bike was mid 1975 and he has the builder's log from that time). My bike (#674) was built in 1975, exactly 1 year after he started. I have a reference to a bike with the exact same details as mine and Mr. Pinder's, purchased in late 1976, with a serial number 100145776 (bike 10014, built May 7, 1976). This should have been about the time he surpassed 1000 frames built, so I think what he did was start over at 10000. So, if you subtract 10000 from 14724, then add the 1000 frames before that, you get 5724. It should be accurate +/- a couple hundred.

I feel better. Thanks.

vjp

This makes perfect sense, thanks for doing the research! The few I have seen in person were really nice, they were '80's bikes and stand up to any American hand built from the time. The OP's bike is the earliest I have seen, and the stay ends really looked like they were "factory" built overseas, glad to be corrected!

JAG410 

I agree with your logic there balindamood, I think he probably did start over after reaching 1000, and 5724 is a pretty realistic number. Ray's processes for assembly and production were streamlined after his work with Schwinn and AMF, so he knew what he was doing when it came to build efficiency.

My "around the block" test ride turned into a 20 mile "out and back". It fits me perfectly, rides incredibly smooth, and it responds extremely well to every input. To say I'm thrilled is an understatement. Oh the places we'll go....