I'm j e a l o u s. Great job! Don't expensive new engines sound nice and tight! Didn't sound TOO bad to my old deaf ears
Reminder - with the smaller wheels and the lower exhaust be extra careful going over speed bumps and drive way cuts etc. You don't want to dent that great sounding shiny new exhaust.
I'm hoping that the rings will seat and the smoking will stop. If it doesn't stop after you get a few more miles on it pull the plugs and look for potential problem oily cylinders before you tear into it.
Why is the compression so high?! Do you have 12.5:1 pistons??
Why not install sync ports in the intake manifolds like we're doing with the CR carbs? It was an easy project. 1/8" brass tube connectors with rubber caps. I say that now but I haven't used mine yet. I have a lead on a potential dyno shop in town so I hope to use mine soon.
Jealous? GOOD
Of course yours isn't chopped liver either!
Care over bumps, check. It is quiet and mellow, just right for an old man's ears. Probably a little restrictive too. The carbs were set up for less restriction so will probably need a little leaning out.
I wasn't thinking so much about rings causing the smoking, i was fixed on the older style guides. So that's hopeful. But I'm not really much of a believer that it will fix itself.
Embarrassed to say I don't know for sure the CR of the pistons. I bot them so long ago... but knowing that it would be a streetbike I can't imagine that i would have gone over 10.5-1. The cranking pressure comes from a tight set up. In the drag shop i worked at the owner was keen on cranking pressures above 200PSI, regardless of set up. Personally i don't know if this is desirable or my boss was just nuts. I'm open for an explanation, are high cranking pressures good, bad, or immaterial? I have read some posts in the performance forum where it was indicated high cranking pressures were a good thing. Regardless, I've got high cranking pressures and I was raised that that was a good thing.
I would install the sync ports if it comes to that. The real problem is the way the adjusters are laid out beneath the carb tops. Not accessible without removing the carbs, it appeared. So I'll look at that in the winter down times. I never synched them in the decades and 10s of thousands of miles I put on it before this iteration.
PS: Now that i think of it, with my frame rails removed they would be accessible. It must have been some other obstacle. The VM29s are used a lot by the Kawasaki Z1 guys,very popular carbs, routinely bring very good prices on eBay. Z1Enterprises is a "buyer" of them, per their website, as they are discontinued. When I bought mine in 1980, they were a lot more common. So synching them must either not be an issue or I'm missing something.