Rare Bird: A 1970 Sportster XLH Turned Desert Sled
You?ll find no shortage of custom Harleys on builder Kento Oketani?s home streets of Long Beach. But you won?t find anything quite like his 1970 Harley-Davidson Sportster XLH. You might not know what to make of it at first glance?but once you understand how this desert sled came to be, the pieces start falling into place.
See, Kento took inspiration from an unlikely source: a custom 1956 pre-unit Triumph that his friend imported from the US to Japan, back in the early 2000s. Kento says the bike was a rare find?an authentic custom show build from the early 60s that had survived in incredible condition.
It was the first vintage scrambler he?d ever seen, and it put him on the path to building custom motorcycles himself. A few years after that chance encounter, Kento relocated from his home town of Ishikawa, Japan, to his current place in Long Beach. It was around that time he started wrenching on bikes?and although vintage Triumphs were a rare sight in Southern California, memories of his friend?s pre-unit were never far from Kento?s mind.
There aren?t many builders who would start a British desert sled project with a 1970 Harley-Davidson, but we?re sure glad someone did. Flipping through pictures of that old Triumph, now yellowed with age, it?s clear that this unlikely mashup of influences shouldn?t work. But there?s no denying that Kento pulled it off with impeccable style.
Up front, the XLH is pure chopper. A set of shaved and chromed 33.4 mm H-D forks hold a brakele...
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