So, I ended up taking the magneto cover off. Turning the crank with a socket feels a lot more precise than it does to spin the back wheel in 5th gear. We leaned the bike over to the right, in order to minimize oil spillage, but there was still quite a bit that came out.
I sealed up the top valve cover with a liquid gasket and bolted everything down again. I removed the valve cover hole plug things (no idea what they are called, but they are the large, circular plastic pieces that screw into the valve cover with a 27mm wrench. I checked the valve clearances, and they were awfully tight! Good thing I got on this when I did. Satisfied that I was complete on that job, I moved on to the next major issue...
After I cleaned out the carbs and added slightly larger main jets (#100 instead of the factory #95), and cut the rusty tips off my exhaust, the motor was only firing on one cylinder. I had compression and spark on both sides. Felt both the pipes. The right one was burning hot. The left one felt cold. Plus, the bike was screaming, and the only thing that would calm it down was to fully choke it.
I pulled the carbs and double checked everything. Turns out my secondary air jet on both sides was pretty clogged. I just hung sprayed all the carb cleaner in the world into both holes, let them sit for a while, repeated the process until the were flowing more freely, then put the carbs back together.
Another issue I noticed immediately is that the carbs weren't seated properly in the engine intake manifold. So, MASSIVE air leak. Once I got them seated properly, things started to sound a lot better. I hired a guy who used to work at the Kawi dealership in town to come by with his carb synch tool. It was really cool, he had a fuel IV, which just makes so much sense ( I need to build one of these). And his carb synch tool was super old school with a bunch of mercury in a vaccuum. This guy is a wizard. He showed up in a '71 Land Cruiser that he built from the ground up, and converted to hydrogen. After 5 minutes of fidling, the bike started to purr like a kitten!
There are still major issues and I am nowhere near having a bike that's been properly jetted to run pods, but I am a LOT closer. I think that the main jets I put in might actually be too big. Right now, I am experiencing no pull in the mid-range, so I am going to have to mess with those a little bit. Fortunately, a friend of mine who works on natural gas compression engines and tunes snowmobiles for run sent me a book called Olav Aaen's Carb Tuning Handbook. It is specifically for Mikuni carbs, but he has used to successfully as a reference for the Keihin carbs on his sled and a few Honda CB's that he restored. I am going to be digging into that book to see what I can find.
So, what's next? Well, other than jetting the bike, I'm looking at getting a bracket welded on the back of the frame to hold my plate, tail light, and turn signals. After that, I need to add an instrument panel (I'm thinking digital), a headlight, and front turn signals.
Then I need to paint, sand, paint, blah blah blah.... None of that matters to me anymore. I just can't wait to get her on the road!