As such a testride was had and a mighty fine one it was. Tyres were scraped in, tachometer needles learned that their rightful place is on the lower right corner of the scale and essentially zero f*cks were given that day. On a more serious note: it's hard to believe that this is a pushrod v-twin with 4-valve heads as the old girl quite happily revs past the red-line and actually really comes to life, once 6000rpm are exceeded and then, honestly, she's one quick lady.
The handling is a lot better than I anticipated and I think I nailed it with the tyre-pressure, as she's very willing to corner as hard as she'll suffer.
Once the brakepads had settled in, well it became rather obvious that the forks might be a bit too soft.
The biggest issue (still) is the carb. First off, there's still tons of rust coming down from the tank. The picture below shows a brand new filter after 75km.
The other thing is, that I had to swap one of the carb-housings along the way and apparently I only swapped needles and needle jets in only one of them.
As the allen-bolts were a bit too long (and tended to come loose) some spring washers were added.
And lastly a new filter was fitted.
Now the factory manual states the mix screw 2 full turns out, but honestly this doesn't work at all with this one, so for now (i.e. until more time for fine-tuning comes up) 0.75 turns will have to suffice. And all of a sudden the old girl starts fine, runs well even from low-rpm and then has got a nice second bite, once she goes past 6000rpm.
