The Doctor grew up in a small town in Croatia, and in his early years he transformed the back streets of his sleepy home into a balls-out race track. At fourteen he built his first bike from a broken scooter frame which quickly got him into trouble with the local police. By sixteen he was earning petrol money fixing bikes for his boy-racer friends. By eighteen he’d built his first chopper.
In the nineties Max, as he was known then, moved to Germany and built a career working on vintage Jaguars and Maseratis. He taught himself via trial and error how to fabricate body work, and in 2004, under the moniker of Dr Mechanik, Max began building one off motorcycles for customers who shunned the mainstream in search of the radical.
Typically the Doctor builds bikes powered by Harley Davidsons and similar big bore engines. However, an old friend, an ex-BMX rider, came to him with an 1988 SR500 and begged to him to build him something special. They argued for months, so finally to shut him up the Doctor struck a deal on the basis that he would only build the bike he wanted to create.
He decided to build him a Bike that will be his vision of a BMX Motorcycle. Light, simple, small, low and fast. He named it Super Sport. As the build progressed, another friend joined in, so they worked on his bike at the same time.
Stripped of everything except the essentials, the Doctor took the grinder to the frame. The rear Showa shocks were lowered by three inches, and the forks shortened. The 19inch wheels were custom made and fitted with fat BMX style tyres. Using Tommaselli hand controls, he mounted his own custom switches, and the headlight was fashioned from a salvaged lamp off a WW2 vehicle.
The Doctor fabricated his own footpegs and mounted them a further five inches back. The Hubs are drilled to make it as light as possible, and the spokes were sandblasted. The body work and wiring loom were custom fabricated.
The paint is black, black and black, offset with flashes of polished ally, the styling is economical but effective. There’s no fat on these bones and the newly named Super Sport is as lean as it is mean.
The built-for purpose machine was the product of six months of long nights; of pizza and beer, and plenty of belly laughs. Three friends who had a great time building very sweet rides. But the team spirit ends at the workshop door, because as the Doctor says: “We never ride together because these two f***ers are far too slow and I have no time to waste:-)”
See more from the good Doctor here on The Bike Shed and at the Dr Mechanik Website. Photos by Andy Schwarzkopf.
First appeared in thebikeshed.cc
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