Vintage Mikuni VM28 and other mistakes I have made on the path to success

1. If you clean the carburetors except the main jet because "everything else looked clean, the main jet must be clean too" you are not done. See photo of the main jet finally removed for cleaning and covered in 20 years of crud. I initially decided to leave them alone be since they would not come out. Well I should have known better and to go after them precisely because they would not budge! Lesson learned. Not to give away the ending but after cleaning the main jet, she started right up.
2. You cannot bench test a generator (I said generator, not an alternator). Well you can but you need to provide current to the electromagnet shields or nothing will happen since the rotor needs to actually cross a magnetic field in order to generate current. If you forgot your high school physics, you will disassemble and clean the generator three times looking for a problem that is not there. Ask me how I know.
3. The shift linkage can be installed either outward or inwards, towards the center of the bike. If you install it towards the pegs (outward), the shift pattern is reversed so when you think you are in 1st, you are actually in 5th and so on. Sooooo when you think you are in neutral, you are actually between 4th and 5th in an accidental neutral......Face palm!
4. Timing is everything. Especially if you want to start a 4-stroke engine but your distributor is incorrectly lined up to spark at the exhaust open cycle, two cycles off. Oops.