Strange running behavior, GL1500

imported post

I've been off work the past week or so, apparently the back pain I've been dealing with recently are from compression fractures. Anyway the 1500 was lying idle as I couldn't ride it but I was able to do some work on it (I put a vent in the windshield). This morning I rode to work on it and it ran like cr^p. It felt like it was running on three cylinders. It just wouldn't run without choke all the time.
When I got home this evening I had a look at the plugs. I pulled the plastics off either side to gain access to the plugs. I pulled the right hand set first and fitted the plugs into the caps and started the engine. It ran ok and the three plugs sparked fine. I then pulled the left hand bank.
Two of them looked like it was running rich the third was wet and had some flaky carbon on it. I put the left ones into the plug caps. and started it up with the right three plugs, it started fine but the dirty plug was sparking on the ceramic not between the electrodes. So I replaced all 6 plugs after checking the plug gaps. It started up and I took it for a short run. All nice and sweet again.
I brought this up to point out that you should check the basics before messing with the carbs, timing, cables. It could save you a lot of headaches.