Quick update while I calm down cause I'm LITERALLY shaking. I remember getting the camshaft sprocket back on with the chain being a bit of a pain when I initially put everything back together and figured if the bike is trying to fire things are close, maybe just out of sync? Low and behold when I took the head back off the camshaft was about 30* off of TDC. Great showing of patience past me...

Sooooooo I got everything nice and back to TDC all around and buttoned her back up last night. Threw me wires back together and muffler on and gave her a try and we have a motorcycle that runs! Bad news is the slide is too high in the carb and idle is like a jet trying to take off. We need to get back to thumpy land. Im going to muck with the adjustment and try to come up with something but today was a HUGE step in the right direction!

I'm not letting it run more than 30 seconds at a time so far. Couldn't resist a good twist and she feels STRONG with that new piston! I am getting some smoke however. Only from the exhaust side of the engine. Could this just be the stupid amounts of starting and fogging oil I blew in there trying to start with a misaligned camshaft?

When I tried firing it before it sounded like the engine was trying to catch up and stay on, really hard to put into words. Also I was getting oil from the exhaust so I figured it was open too late or too early, something was off. I ended up removing the head with the engine in frame and really double and triple checking. I just took the sprocket off (left the tensioner and everything down below stay in place) and kind of rolled it in place under the chain. You cant move more than one tooth at a time but it worked.

I just ran it for a few minutes to look for changes. I'm seeing puffs of white from the exhaust and I want to say black from the header port. It is a fair amount of smoke, not quite fog machine but enough to concern me. I've read that some smoke is normal after a rebuild and it did drop to the high 40s here in Texas. I'm using up the last few drops of 87 in the tank and I'll be refilling with the good stuff plus a splash of seafoam.

Hands are steady but I can still feel the adrenaline 😉

K update: smoking seems to have stopped. Ran it for a good 5 minutes including some hard pulls into the upper revs complete with sparking backfires and there is some haze when you look at the display but no visible smoke coming from the pipe or the header.

With the current jetting I am getting a few drops of gas coming from the intake port. I've got a 200 and a 20 in there now for jets, any suggestions to go for a new start point?

I'll try raising it a bit, my readout is showing 2400 but I just guessed that was about double its actual, the highest I saw it get to was just over 10k. I'll have to fiddle with some settings and see if I can get a proper read out. I noticed that unlike the stock cv style, the carb will overflow if I leave the petcock on. When running though the drips were from the rubber gasket area.

Red hot header is most likely from being super-rich and unburnt fuel is making its way to the header where it burns.  

Header turning cherry red is definitely lean condition. Unburnt gas burning that close in the header will soon result in the spark being drowned out.
Cool.
Srinath.