Dagger Cycles’ Little Misfit

Little Misfit is exactly that. Super-skinny wheels & tyres carry this 350 single with a scrambler tank and inverted bars finished off with a crooked cafe racer seat that runs up the tank. You won’t have seen a build quiet like this before, and this is all good in our book.

Roberto Polizzi is the builder, and he hails from Biella in the north of Italy where the 42 year old worked in a motorcycle spares shop, and now with his friend Andrea Campagnolo in a workshop they’ve christened “Leave your S…” This is where Little Misfit was born.

The bike was originally a mid-sized 1991 TT350 trailie which Roberto found in a friend’s garage. It wasn’t in good condition, having been thrashed off-road most of it’s life, but it was a runner. Roberto started to strip her down to see what the potential was. In his own words, he doesn’t usually begin a project without “an exact idea of what  I want” but in this case his only thought was to build a bike with cheap parts and scrap metal, heavily influenced by the aesthetics of movie road-warrior Mad Max; “a punkish post atomic bike that could make a Humungus smile”.

As well as benefiting from an engine overhaul and modified airflow, the bike has front forks from a Honda XL125 and have been shortened, while the rear shocks were pinched from a Cagiva Elefant 200. The front wheel is also a XL125 laced with galvanised spokes to a freshly powder-coated rim shod with an Avon while the rear wheels is the stock Raggi, again, with new spokes and powder-coated rim wearing a Metzler.

The bars are Ergal, mounted upside down. The tank is frm an XL125, while the seat is hand made. Apart from the obvious changes to the lights, etc, there are a few scrap/punk touches like the Volume Knob earnings used on the fork caps, Brass Knuckle starter and a skateboard wheel as the chain tensioner.

“My final project was something completely against the trend: now everyone turns every bike into a old
fashioned stylish scrambler, ok I did the opposite, I started from an off-road bike and I got a sort of café racer. Well, It’s not so easy to realize which type of bike is, it looks like a strange mix between a cafè racer, a boardtracker and an hardcore punk singer: that’s why I called it “Little Misfit”, a misfit to other bikes.”

With this build Roberto decided to create his own brand, Dagger Motorcycles, which comes from the two daggers he has inked on his arms. It also relates to the idea of him “stabbing” stock bikes with his own modifications.

The bike Roberto’s his own personal ride and he loves it; “I just wanted to get around and make some noise because
in the end, I’m just here for the gasoline”. At just 125kg a 350 single is going to be a hoot to hoon around on, and it’s certainly unlikley to pass unnoticed through the streets of bike-loving northern Italy.

See more from Roberto on his Facebook page and thanks to Gianrico for setting up the story.

via The Bike Shed