Now, you beginning to grasp the previous owner syndrome
You just never know what you're going to find!
I wonder how he managed to bend a slide?
Was there any debris/gunk in the carbs?
Id bet money that the PO experienced PPO syndrome
The VM carb bodies were made of very very soft compound metal, mostly zink and aluminum and some magnesium from what I understand. The BS series were a bit more solid, a bit harder. If those VM carbs were left exposed to precipitation for any length of time, the corrosion of the slides vs the bore of those carbs will lock the slide up tighter than a drum. I made this mistake once.....ONCE. And I tried EVERYTHING in the world to unstick the slide. Prying only did damage (just like the pic) to the slide, and no chemical soaks I tried (Berrymans, CLR, Boiling it in CLR, etc etc) would free that puppy up. Apparently the compound metals in the older carbs and the slides become VERY VERY fond of eachother.
You'll definately want to replace that slide. While the damage done initially would look fairly superficial, the cutaway on those slides are precise and necessary. While I cant say that it would cause a whole lot of problems, at this point, you need to eliminate as many problems or possible problems from your equation as possible.
Which brings me to my next point. Your plan of attack sounds quite sound. I would suggest that you follow the carb cleaning to the letter. And better still, do it twice. Even a little tiny bit of gunk in, say, the choke pickup in the float bowl, or the pilot passages, will cause you grief. The tollerances here are very very small. Besides the soaking in dip, the cleaning with spray etc, some strands of COPPER wire are your best friend here. Copper is softer than the brass in the jets, pick up tube, and passages in the bodies themselves, so it wont do any damage to them such as gouging or the like that could cause problems in the AFR later on. But copper will likely be harder than any crap that might be lodged in the pilot jet, needle jet or emulsion tube etc etc. Use it liberally, push that crap out and then blast the passages and jets with carb spray, making sure each sprays roughly the same pattern. Oh, be sure to wear saftey glasses here. Some of those passages come right back around to your face, and carb spray in the eye is exquisitely painfull. Dont ask how I know..just trust me
While youre waiting on your carbs to soak (and let them soak a day, 24 hours, but no more, as the bodies will start to "skin" with a metallic, sticky residue that could cause your slides to stick... dont ask how I know about that either. And if you can get one, a nylon bottle brush is a nice tool to have on hand to assure your slide bores are nice and clean..) adjust those valves! This is key to assuring you have a proper baseline to start your carb tuning. If you do the carbs first, and then adjust the valves, you'll find you might have to mess with the carbs again.
Lastly, If your airbox is in workable shape (and a good cleaning and a spray with some Duplicolour Low Gloss Black will make her look damn nice again) USE IT FIRST. Its much easier to tune the bike for aftermarket performance parts when it is running well in the first place. Remember, you're setting a baseline for everything here. So having it running in STOCK setup is the best baseline for later changes...
Good luck!
TCK
