1980 kz750 ltd jetting/power issues are sapping my will to live

No more riding this until my exhaust comes anyways—took it out today and I feel terrible riding it anywhere, especially whenever I pull up next to cars at lights. Got a lot of nasty looks and I was wishing I had some way to let them know that it wasn’t by choice.. 
anyways, I was able to acquire a spark plug socket so I yanked the #4 plug today and took a look at it. I’ll attach a picture. It looks pretty covered in carbon, except that the electrodes are a different, lighter color. Is the carbon fouling from the old running condition since the pipes have only been off for a few miles total, or would it have changed the plug completely in that time to indicate how it’s truly running now? The texture also looks a bit messed up, could that be damage from running hot before rejetting? If anyone is more experienced with reading plugs, could you take a crack at the image I attached and let me know what you think? Should I replace these guys once I get the exhaust as well or can I just clean them? Thanks!

That is running lean if I've ever seen lean spark plugs. The whiteness indicates that it is running lean. You should be looking for a tan color. That is probably from when the engine was still running lean as it can take a while for the plugs to be read after changes depending on how you rode it. There are charts online that can help you with spark plug color, just look up spark plug color meaning or something of the llikes.Thr spark plugs won't tell you the full story unfortunately because its telling you the average of all of the rev range you used compared to if you rode the bike at 5k rpm for 10 minutes then kill-switched the bike and read the plugs which would tell you the mixture in the midrange, for example.

So is the move to replace the spark plugs and see how a fresh set of plugs ages? Also, the flash is kinda deceiving but the rest of the spark plug besides the electrode is completely coated in carbon. I have included a photo without flash and I think you can see a bit better.
I did do a bit of googling on spark plug colors but I didn’t find anything that I thought was a solid match to what I have.

Something else just occurred to me. Please pardon me if this was already discussed.

I am pretty sure your bike came with Kawasaki's Clean Air System. It consisted of some hoses and a vacuum operated switch. The system introduced clean air from the air filter box into the exhaust ports in order to dilute the exhaust gasses and keep the EPA happy. Over the years, most bikes have had that system deleted. The system was powered by vacuum supplied by two of the carburetors and those ports must be capped when the system is removed.

One carb, usually number two, should have a small hose connecting its vacuum port to the fuel petcock on the bottom of the fuel tank. When the engine is running vacuum from that carb opens the valve to allow fuel to flow into all the carbs.
When the CAS is deleted, the vacuum ports on the other three carbs should be tightly capped. If they are not capped, the mixture in those carbs will be wickedly lean.

just a suggestion. install the airbox using some clamps. and whatever other hardware might be needed. such as angle iron brackets. 

H1Vindicator wrote:

just a suggestion. install the airbox using some clamps. and whatever other hardware might be needed. such as angle iron brackets. 

That would rule out a lot of issues...