My son and I are headed down to Tennessee on Thursday to ride old motorcycles with a crowd of like-minded old motorcycle riders.

I'm on my '69 BSA Firebird, and him on his '68 Suzuki T500 Cobra.

We put new brakes, chain, sprockets, plugs, head bearings, tires, and fork seals and bushings on it, but I haven't messed with the engine since it seemed to start and run ok on short runs.

But on the highway, he said it seems to bog down a bit at 70+ going uphill in fifth gear, and won't pull from 2500 RPM like his '76 GT500 Titan would.

I said that due to the '68-'69 porting, it wasn't going to pull at 2500 like a '76, which was ported for low rpm grunt like a 4-stroke.

But I drained the gas (some of which had been in it for over a year) and put 90 octane non-ethanol in it, changed the plugs, pulled and cleaned the baffles, pulled and cleaned the air filter, cleaned and gapped the points (one set was too wide), and set the timing with a dial indicator down the spark plug holes to assure firing at 3.40 mm ( .134" ) (24 degrees) BTDC.

Only bike I've ever worked on that has NO spark advance provision. I was looking for a way to lock it at full advance to set timing, and had to join a Suzuki forum to find out there isn't any.

Raining here so can't test ride it, but it started and revved like a good 'un so at least I did no harm ... Neat old bike!

Lannis