So I took her for a ride in the mountains last night, and just rode to work. Here are some initial observations:
Compression on the motor is fantastic; my old engine never pulled that hard up top, and it revs to 9k freely.
Carb sync is all out of whack; if I don't really give it gas from a stop, it will stall. If I close the throttle while coasting to a stop, it will stall. And between 3k and 6k, its SUPER sluggish. Doesn't wanna accelerate. Then you hit 6k and it takes off all the way to redline.
New shocks seem to be much better than the last ones. I had Progressive air shocks, now I have regular adjustable ones that are SUPER stiff. Great for my gravity-laden 4th point of contact....
I now truly understand why people love the GL's for touring; going back to Athena from the 83 GS1100 I've been riding, the difference in how smooth the bike is is astonishing. And that's with the crappy carb sync. I can barely feel engine vibrations in the handlebars, the ride itself is smooth because of the shaft drive, and the gearbox in the GL has got to have set some standard in how smooth a gearbox should operate. Its a thing of beauty.
I also will have to adjust how far I lean, because I've already scraped some bits going into a turn too hot.
Overall, I think its gonna be a lot of fun. The new engine only had 18k miles on it, so unless I wreck her or trash the engine again, I'm gonna have her for a long time.
I want to thank you all for the information, advice, support and camaraderie. Really helped keep me on point when I was ready to give up.
So yeah, pics will come later today. She's a total rat bike, and missing parts, but that's why she's a "project", right?
P.S. I just read this... I REALLY take the anthropomorphization all the way, eh? But I think we all do....