Float Bowl Levelling kz650 - also carb refurb warning

So two things, I pulled the carbs and bought some small 1/4 i think OD clear hose and tried to heat it up and screw it into the float bowl, that sucked. I had a great idea, i ran the hose through one of the kids pencil sharpeners and it worked amazing. gave it a bit of a taper and then heated it and screwed it in. man i love it when a plan comes together. 

So what I discovered was that all the float heights were wrong, and from there all the levels also were off. I rigged up a gas tank from an old ride on lawnmower and hung the carbs from the ceiling on some old climbing rope at eye level. This worked so well, except for all the gas i spilled all over the shop. If you ignore that it worked well. I had to adjust two of the floats twice due to tryin small adjustments each time but pretty stoked about the result as i was getting fuel barfing from two of the overflows previously and one of the levels was quite low actually that couldnt have helped it run smooth. 

The part im pissed about is that these carbs have 35 kms on them, thats it and I paid GOOD money to a guy off here who claimed to be THE carb expert. one of the floats has a piece missing from it, like a chip out of it, and I one bowl was swapped and also all the brass drain screws except one were swapped out with aluminum ones. carb 2 had a chewed up O ring sending debris into the jets and it wasnt seated all the way, needless to say, be careful whose advise or expertise you take i guess. 

upside is i now feel like i know the bike a lot better and float heights are dialed in. Am i right to think you set the float height first, and then when checking bowl levels you dont care about the height anymore? I also had one float that was bent and rubbing on the bowl gasket and potentially sticking closed....