New pods, tuning seems off

Hey folks, I'm a bit of a new kid. I've got a KZ650 SR from 78'. It's got the original four mikuni carbs on it and I've been struggling with these for a bit. I would get a lot of coughing through the carbs so I cleaned and rebuilt them. They caughed still so I set all the needles to a leaner setting and it's not coughing anymore, takes a bit more to get it to warm up (will be really finicky in first for the first 5-10 minutes of riding). I've adjusted the floats and maybe that fudged it up? Any help would be awesome.

This has got to be the single most discussed topic on this forum. If you spend a little time using the search function, you will find tons of threads on the subject.
The short version of it all is, to get the carbs to function close to how they did with the factory intake system will require changing jets and retuning them. That will not be completely effective unless they have been thoroughly disassembled and perfectly cleaned first. Then come bench synchronizing, tuning, vacuum synchronizing and then jet experimentation and final tuning and synchronizing.
Or you could just put the factory air box and filter back on and skip most of this.

When you adjusted the floats, did you use the clear tube method as described in the factory service manual?

Thanks Tex, I will probably try some more experimentation. The guy who had it before me got it pretty well tuned for for pods and I replaced the pods and it's just been a rough ride. Thanks again for the response!

The coughing you mentioned can also be caused by insufficient valve lash. Checking them is one of the most neglected maintenance items on these old bikes. Valve lash is really important on these engines, and no amount of jacking with the carbs can overcome valves that do not fully close. Tuning carbs is not terribly complicated, but has to be done systematically because of how the various circuits interact with each other. Correct valve lash has to come first, because it affects carb adjustments.

and......
Did you buy high quality filters like APE or K&N? Some of the cheaper brands are so poorly designed that they block the air jets in the mouth of certain carbs. I am not sure whether or not the specific carbs on your bike have those jets, but it is worth checking.

+1
Beware of cheap pods. Remove pod, and look inside. Some cheapos have a lip that restricts airflow to intake and air jets.

Always worthwhile chrcking valve clearances on a new bike

+1 to what has been said so far. I did an extensive mod on my 650- 720 big bore, stage 3 jets, 4-1 exhaust. Then I did a mono shock rear, so I had to run pods. I essentially started from scratch and wanted to throw things at the carbs many times. It took ALOT of patience and understanding of the circuits to get it dialed in. There were a few things that made tuning far quicker. 1. Buy a guns on colour tune to set your pilot circuit. This dialed me in super close to where the bike wanted to run on the pilot circuit. 2. Buy some sort of a vacuum tuner to set vacuum between the carbs. I use a gravity set up with ball bearings in a few loops of tube. Works wicked. 3. Tuning the upper end will take a bit of pulling the plugs after a WOT run then hitting the killswitch. Needles can be a pain to set, especially depending on if you have installed a carb kit.
In the end- be resdy for some long nights of tuning. Make sure you have a good fan parked in front of the bike to keep it cool while tuning. Good luck!