I bought this as my second motorcycle, looking for something a little more casual than the CBR 1000F. It was a bit neglected by the previous owner after he had been rear-ended on it, and then I had some trouble as described in this forum post:
I was cruising down the interstate at 7k rpms, sixth gear, when I backfired a few times and lost a lot of power. I pulled over and nursed it to the next exit about a mile away. It seemed that it could hold 40mph but not anything more. ... After stopping and checking that, I tried to nurse it a little farther towards home. I made it about 2 miles and then it started backfiring more...
After some discussion on that forum I decided that I needed to tear it down to see if anything was damaged. Everything looked fine and the process of tearing it apart was pretty interesting, but the motorcycle remained in a disassembled state for quite some time in my garage. Eventually I got it mostly together but couldn't get it to fire more than once or twice. I took it to a garage mechanic in Fargo and he fixed the orientation of the cam shaft. He also had a buddy that welded on the new exhaust pipes and mounts for the passenger foot pegs.
But further riding revealed that it still had trouble running consistently. By this time I had it in Medora--fortunately I never got stranded out in the Badlands as I was always able to nurse it home. One time this was on the road between town and the interstate bridge on the way into the park, in the rain and with small hail! I believe there were some issues with some wires in the points shorting out on the case and I fixed that, but still it would often drop to one cylinder.
I never got around to figuring out the issue. Eventually my dad decided to take it to Bismarck to get it looked at. He couldn't find anyone good willing to look at it but tinkered unsuccessfully himself. Best guess is that it was something with a carburetor but we are not sure as he eventually sold it for me.