I've been told it idles

After a few months of reading and learning quite a bit about how carburetors work, I decided I needed some help. As much as I wanted to fix this bike myself, I want to ride it even more.

I called Brad Bayley of Bayley's Repair who said he could come by and pick up the bike on Saturday. After running it a bit in my driveway, we decided to pull off the aftermarket Mikuni VM32 round slide carburetors and rebuild the stock ones. I happened to have two sets of BS34s in disrepair (one from the XS650 that was collecting dust on a shelf) and Brad said he could likely combine the two into one well-running set. Before he left, he said it would be a few weeks before he could really get to working on it due to some other projects and that he'd let me know if he ran into any issues.

You can imagine my surprise when he called me a few hours later and said that because I seemed so excited about finally getting to ride it, he had spent the morning rebuilding the carbs and that it was running quite well. I would need to get a new throttle cable and air filters (there is a size difference between the VM32s and the BS34s) but the bike was running. Before dropping it off, I asked him to check out the valves for adjustment and change the oil.

Now, I just need to:

• See if the XS650 throttle cable will fit. If not, I'll be ordering one when the budget allows.
• I'd like to test the manometer that I built and see how well it works now that I know the carbs are synced.
• Find someway to build up the rear end/seat. There is currently nowhere to mount the tail light, blinkers or license plate.

Almost there.