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.…