Thanks everyone so far for your replies....
I'm owner #3.. but I bought it with 18000 km on the clock 10 yrs ago... it was totally unmolested by its prior owners, and so far, relatively unmolested by me ;-) I have to admit to heavy riding in rain and everything else in those 10 years, but I've kept up on the maintenance.
I'm pretty confident in my meter... Plus it's backup meter says the same thing ;-)
"Steam" was just a descriptor for what I saw rising.. oh it was definitely SMOKE... just hard to tell the colour as the sun's going out..
I actually can't rev the engine to check max voltage output because of the secondary issue... gotta love the 2 at a time issues.. she was running fine when I came home from a 200km trip.. but 26yr old components.. well, guess they sometimes do fail!
Had to do some yard work, but now it's time to dig in a little further.. maybe I do have a mouse living in the airbox