Helpless '82 KZ550 in the hands of a TOTAL NEWBIE

If not already done, would sniff-test and physically examine the crankcase oil, which might possibly have become diluted with gasoline.

Good Fortune!

Hi all, thanks again for all the input.

Using the clymer manual and the factory service manual as guides, I took out the carbs, removed the bowl and cleaned out everything I could including all the screws and the carb body. There wasn't much to clean.

I wiped and cleaned the airbox, checked all the hoses, clamps, boots, gaskets, O-rings and didn't find any issues. I threw everything back on without any issues and the bike started up ok. I can get it to idle but now the 3rd cylinder is not firing (or not firing very well). The bike idles but doesn't respond well at all when I throttle up, and it almost stalls out when I'm in gear. After running it for a while the 3rd exhaust pipe is warm while the others are piping hot, and the right muffler (3 and 4) has a weaker exhaust pattern than the left (1 and 2).

Spent all day trying to troubleshoot this. I dont see any leaks and all the air/vacuum/fuel hoses are tightly connected. I have spark on the #3 plug, couldn't tell if it was adequate so I trimmed and re-attached the cables and put a new plug in. That seemed to improve the performance quite a bit, but still not able to get past 4x RPMs in neutral nor about 15mph on the road. I'm not sure what else to check. I'm positive I put the carbs back together correctly (they were hardly even apart and I took hours to do it).

Any ideas what might be wrong?