i've been meaning to update this one. basically, it was a little of everything, and everyone was right, and so far so good. except the real kicker was a little detail we thought was covered, but it was not so obvious as to make me feel stupid. (i get enough of those.) it's been an education in troubleshooting.
i did find one cap badly out of spec, so i replaced it first, followed one at a time by the others, which were also off (around 10k). none of these steps corrected the "missing" behavior (i methodically took rides from cold between each one). while i was at it, i trimmed the very ends of the wires, which dropped my resistance a wee bit more, i guess since i had fresh non-oxidized core to bite into.
determined to do as little to the carbs as necessary for fear of making it worse, i set the tank up off the bike with fuel lines so as to be able to tweak it while running. well, wouldn't ya know it, lightly wiggling the slide adjusters had enough of an effect to encourage further dabbling. it wasn't pretty, but expecting the worst, i loosened a few locknuts and patiently made some minuscule adjustments until i had it happiest. i now have 4 hot pipes at idle and much closer temps between the 4 overall. i'll keep checking my plugs for a while to see if further actual gauge-syncing is called for. (i'll get to it regardless, trust me...)
but guess what? run better though it did, the p*cker kept doing it. the hot miss. so, still emboldened by my earlier effort and its concomitant improvement, i took to futzing with the points while it was running. lo and fricking behold. pinching or wiggling the 1-4 points made it fire correctly. son of a #$%*. (mind you, i had cleaned and properly gapped the points while the bike was not running, as well as static timing, but i have no timing light so had not taken a close look there with it running, once the problem began.) i took apart said points, re-bent the spring for more tension, carefully reassembled the little washers and everything in the right order, and walla, walla, washington. no problems since.
i was familiar with the concept of a high-speed "point float", and even checked them this time around for integrity, but since i was getting proper voltage across them (1.5 v less than battery, never more of a drop than that), i had moved on. but a "slow speed float" must have been what was going on, right? just enough point surface degradation with just enough spring fatigue, which, hello, a warmer spring is a softer spring, i would have to think, hence the hot behavior. i have also since read about "double springing", which would help, but i gather is more oriented toward high-rpm, racing-type conditions.
many thanks for your interest and guidance. now on to the next issue.....
-jc
