Thanks lads!
After putting 1000km's on the bike I figured it would be a good time for a bit of a ride report, then I'll put this thread to sleep, call it complete and start the next project ;D
A couple things proved a little more hassle than I thought - one being the exhaust silencer and the other being the carb - which ended up being partly related, partly not.
Turns out (most logically actually) that the silence makes a big difference to the carb settings. No matter what I tried with the old Britt style silencer, I couldn't get it to perform or sound the way I wanted it to. It always sounded hollow, tinny and empty-ish. Especially because I had a reference point from the Jadus test mules (an awesome sound). Plus the carb just didn't like it. I tried two different sound/db killer inserts and even tried the perforated style with the packing, but the design of the silencer does not allow this very easily so it was a compromised solution. The bike would splutter from dot to 1/4 throttle then would go pretty ok after that. I also tried with a shorty hot dog silencer as well but that was a little too loud for me.
I ended up going with the tried and tested 17'' Emgo reverse cone silencer - the one I had used for all the dyno testing. It is not standard though, I gut out the spark arrestor plate (or what ever the perforated plate in the middle of the thing is) and re-pack it with some high quality packing material - really getting as much on as I can and as dense as I can - then tie it all on with thin wire. This set up just barely fits back in the cone but it makes the sound really deep and throaty and gutting the plate out of it means it is a very free flowing silencer. Once I installed this, the jetting settings were spot on and she pulled crisp and clean all the way to the top again.
Then a week or so after sorting that out I started having further carb problems - or what I suspected were carb problems - could have been spark/ignition but I doubted that. I swapped the carb for one tuned one I had from the other bike and the problem disappeared. When inspecting the original carb I noticed the needle was not sitting 100% in it's correct resting position (in the slide housing) and that had caused some very minute wear on it - right at the position I felt issues in the rpm range and just enough to mess things up. So I swapped it for a new OEM needle and this fixed the problem.
I also swapped the non-vacuum petcock back to a stock one. I hated the fact that you could run the risk of overfilling the carb at rest if the float needle didn't seat 100%. This happened once and that was enough for me to want to get rid of it.
The ride itself is pretty good. I ride it much more aggressively than I have with any other SR. I have been managing to scrape the pegs and have actually wear marks on the entire tread of the tyres - no chicken strips! ;D The new geometry, with ride height and head stem angle etc seems real stable - have had it up to 130k on the highway with no stability problems. I ride with a buddy of mine who has a DR650. He eats me at all the stops and straights, but I get it all back in the twisties if we are on some country roads 8)
The one thing that annoys me a lot though is how soft and unresponsive the front suspension is. I think the forks are long over due for a service. I will start there - clean them out, put in some new thicker weight oil and also add some preload spacers. If that is not satisfactory I can try the Minton mods or some emulators. Sometimes on the highway at certain speeds the forks can start bouncing/bobbing around. I think this is in part to the extra rotational mass of the fatter front rim and tyre that the stock forks are not designed to deal with - it must be some kind of frequency thing. But it could also just be that fact that they are old and tired as mentioned and need some more preload and thicker oil.
Also, anyone wondering about the brakes? I think they pull things up just fine! But then again the bike weights probably around 115kg and I'm around 70, so rolling mass is not enormous. I also have the disc brake set up from the SR250 Classic to compare to and although that is better, the drum is not as awful as people make it out to be.
Well thats it folks! Looking forward to some more riding when the Swedish summer decides to deliver... :
