I have known Dave Polegreen for a few years and it amazes me that the guy churns out so many bitchen bikes on a regular basis. It’s like there are three of him banging away on old Harleys in his basement. Dave has already had bikes featured in Street Chopper, and I am sure he will have a few more in future issues.
While Dave and I were in Japan for the Mooneyes show, he was flipping through his iPhone and between the midget porn and photos of Dave’s various hairdos, a photo of this bike showed up. It was funky, but not too weird. If you told me the sum of its parts without actually seeing it, I would have though the builder was crazy or stupid, and the Mr. Polegreen is neither. A few months ago I hit him up about the bike and he notified me that none other than Josh Kurpius traveled up to the Twin Cities where Mr. and Mrs. Polegreen reside and took some rather stellar shots of this machine.
Dave finished this bike about two years ago and has been riding it pretty steadily since. Due to the goofy style of the headlights and massive amounts of chrome, the moniker “Mr. Roboto” stuck. The engine and transmission is from a ’79 that Jason Clampett at Kokesh Motorcycles had gone through and freshened up. Mr. Roboto’s rolling chassis came from a tweaker bike that Dave bought from Anthony Robinson a few years ago, except it came with dual 16-inch spoked wheels and a rat’s nest of wires at the time.
Dave built this bike to sell to fund other motorcycle projects, but here he is still riding it after all this time. It’s no secret that Dave is a big fan of late-’60s/early-’70s choppers, and he ended up building something that, for the most part, wouldn’t have looked too out of place back then. Dave says, “It is a relatively simple chopper with a just little flash.” We think it’s just a bit more than that.
Being a skilled craftsman, Dave made most of the parts on this bike by himself, including the dual headlight mount, the pipes, all of the mounting brackets for the tank, the oil bag and rear fender, the coil mount, the foot control setup, and a bunch of other shit. He used a mix of newer parts, like the rear calipers, a modern ignition, etc., with vintage stuff like the tank and fender, headlights, and handlebars. The 21- and 16-inch wheels are invader mags done by none other than Scott at Invader Wheels who is one of the original invader wheel manufacturers from back in the day.
Dave also told me that this bike has been remarkably trouble free and handles and rides like it was factory built. It just has a real rock-solid feel to it. Dave also told me that since Mr. Roboto had evolved into keeper status, he plans on changing some things this winter, including removing the electric start, putting on a magneto, and getting new springs and a valve kit for the frontend, and that’s it! Yeah right Dave. We don’t believe you. SC