I had one of these for my first bike. Rock solid. Mine was a 96 also, with 43,000 miles on it when I sold it. The regulator/rectifiers are junk. They are plastic and don't have any heat sinks on them. I would check into that if it had a battery issue. It was pretty quick, and handled decent. I really enjoyed mine. I can post a few pics if you'd like. As far as the carbs go, take lots of pictures, use bike bandit for diagrams, and be as careful as you have ever been. cbrforum.com's f3 section was gobs and gobs of help to me.