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Harley-Davidson Mother Lake Rides on the Perfect Set of Wheels

A quick search for the term mother lake will quickly reveal a number of meanings. First and foremost, it stands for a Japanese lake officially called Biwa, the country’s biggest. But it can also mean a 2016 Japanese flick about a photographer who once believed there was a dinosaur in the lake, and several slang concepts. As of now, you can add a custom Harley-Davidson Softail motorcycle to the list of meanings.
Harley-Davidson Mother Lake 20 photos
Photo: Bad Land
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Mother Lake is the name of this custom build put together about a decade ago by a Japanese garage we’ve featured extensively these past few years, named Bad Land. Like most of this shop’s many other projects (and there are some 155 custom motorcycles in its portfolio already), this one too is a dark apparition, unlike the beautifully blue lake it takes the name from, and meant to roam the streets of Japan.

The usual complement of Bad Land changes can be seen on the ride, and they start, of course, with the wheels. For this project, the shop went for Performance Machine pieces of hardware, sized 21 inches at the front and 18 inches at the rear. They both come with seven beautifully crafted spokes, which look particularly classy on the front piece, while the rear one makes an incredible statement of power at 300 mm wide. The perfect set of wheels, if you ask me.

There are a number of unique custom elements featured on the Mother Lake, made by Bad Land specifically for this ride, and available nowhere else. The list of such parts starts with the gloss black front fender, covering a sizeable portion of the wheel, and ends with the rear fender, which partially supports the seat.

In between these two, but mostly at the front, we get a custom fuel tank with the Harley-Davidson lettering on them, in the usual Bad Land calligraphy style, but also a unique headlight and a handlebar to match.

Harley\-Davidson Mother Lake
Photo: Bad Land
The impressive exhaust system, snaking up and down and with its tips facing outward, seems to be the only other modification made to the bike’s original powerplant, coupled only with a new air cleaner supplied by W&W Cycles. Ending the visual changes made towards the rear of the Softail is an in-house made wide swingarm.

The same W&W Cycles is responsible for the handlebar-mounted turn signal, and Kellermann for the LED lights. Rebuffini is the name that can be found on the Mother Lake’s triple tree, while the instrumentation, namely the speedometer, was supplied by motogadget.

Bad Land never was a shop willing to share information on how much money its customers spend on having their motorcycles modified in such a manner, and the Mother Lake is no exception. Also, given the fact it was made a decade ago, the motorcycle is particularly difficult to track down, so its whereabouts remain largely unknown.

Now that we know it’s out there, though, maybe it’ll be easier for us to spot, so we'll keep an eye out for more info on it.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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