Pods restricted with Vinyl Tape!!???

Took my recently purchased KZ1000J1 to a local bikeshop, just to feel out the vibe and evaluate whether I'd ever get any work done there.
Owner was quite excited by my bike, asked if the pods and Kerker made her lean at all, and asked to spin her round the block. When he returned, he suggested I fatten her up by taping off 1/3 to 1/2 of my filter space with electrial tape. This struck me as a little crazy, but, there's plenty I dunno.
This bike seems to lag a bit at 2000 rpm in 2nd gear, and has occasionally stumbled a bit in 3rd gear around 5700rpm.... I sorta figured a good tune-up might help that.
Any opinions?

Also, it was raining on the highway when I experienced the third gear stumble.
How bad would it be to re install stock airbox without going back to stock exhaust?

Sounds like you need to get your jetting right. Tape on the pods is a jackleg way of accomplishing this. There are numerous threads on jetting your bike correctly.

Running pods in the rain will cause a bog for sure. The outer pods get wet then you can loose two cylinders. In a light rain you can tell when they get wet but usually clear up. A gullywasher of a rain will for sure have you running on the two middle cylinders and the motor runs like crap untill they dry out

There's conflicting opinions about using the stock airbox with any kind of mod's. From what I've gathered about the threads I've read using the stock airbox with a hi flow filter is almost as good as pods for racing. For street use, its easier to jet your bike with the stock airbox and they perform as well or better on the street. That being said, I'm still putting pods on my project bike. I don't mind jetting. On all of my other bikes I just use a k&n or the stock box and filter..