Right exhaust only gets warm? Horrible acceleration.

My bikes a 1980 xs650. I've had some trouble with acceleration the last few weeks. The bike struggles to speed up, at times I almost don't know if it"ll make it up a steep hill, even with my hand holding the throttle wide open.

So I cleaned up my carbs a bit, and got a brand new battery. When I was working on all this I noticed 2 things that I think are significant.

The first, is that my right float does not hold nearly the same amount of gas as my left. At times when I needed to flush them out through the valves on the bottom of the bowl, my left bowl would gush out for a good bit, but my right bowl would only have maybe 50-75% of what my left did. As in what came out was not nearly the same amount. Now it was on it's kickstand tilting to the left, but I dontthink it would make that much of a diffrence?

The second thing, is that my right exhaust doesn't get as hot as it should. My left exhaust is scorching hot, as it should be for a exhaust pipe. However my right exhaust only gets warm, and I can actually wrap my entire palm around t. For reference, it's get as hot as a coffee cup, so If I had to I could hold onto it for quite some time.

Any idea guys as to what's causing these 2 things, and dO you agree that it is the main factors or contributing factors to why I'm having horrible acceleration? All the help I can get is appreciated.

sounds to me like you have a dead cylinder. pull the plug wire on that side and see if it runs any differently. If not, that cylinder isnt firing. Check your plugs and see if your getting good spark Since thats the simplest thing. It could be that you didnt do a thorough enough job on the carbs. Go back through them, pull the jets, make sure they are not clogged, i rod mine out with a guitar string. Make sure all of the passages are clear as well. My kawasaki did the same thing, i got it running right and im a shitty mechanic.

I also had the same problem with a cb360. Ended up being a bad plug, which was caused by valves that were way out of adjustment. So check that too. Should be easy if you have a manual.

Have you checked your float levels? You said the right side did not have as much in it as the left. If the float level is out of adjustment bad enough the right side may not be getting any fuel.

Thanks everyone for the help.

Here's what I'm wondering. Are these 2 problems independent of each other? Some of you are saying it could be as bad as a spark plug, which might fix the problem; but would it fix the fuel issue with the float?

While on the opposite side, I could see the float bowl issue fixing the cylinder issue. Meaning that it the spark plug was not the problem.

Then again. It could very well be a combination of both.

Could be independent. There's no reason why moto problems need to be related. For instance, my suzuki is a filthy monster that leaks oil, but it also has a pretty annoying charging issue. No relation.

They can be tied together or seperate. Have you checked to see if you have spark on that side? If the right side is running way too lean as a result of having a low float level it could have burnt the electrode tip off the plug. Let us know what else you find.

Sounds to me like MTW has the call on this one...

UPDATE:

So the deep socket I have that i thought fit the spark plug is a tad to small. Went to my local hardware shop to find out that their sold out of the one i need. I'll have to make a longer trip out later when I have more time.

What i've found though on this short trip is a few things.

1) My spark is confusing......I started my bike, let it warm for a few minutes and then when it was all good to go, I shut it off, pulled the cap off my right spark plug and tried starting the bike. It started just fine.......But.....I rode the bike to my local hardware shop, probably just a 8 minute ride, parked it, went inside for about 10 minutes, came back out and did the same thing. However this time it would not start with the right spark cap off, but it did when i put the cap right back on. Odd?

2) I've got some backfiring now, i don't think i had any before i cleaned up the carbs. its of course coming out the right exhaust. Its only happening when i'm idling, at a stop and what not. Never when i'm accelerating/decelerating or even just cruising higher than my idle rev. EDIT: i'm not sure if backfiring would be the right word, i would say its more of a pop.

3) the right carb is making a odd sound, and even though i'm not familiar with the sound, it sounds like its starving for gas. Kind of like a gasping sound, almost a little sputter too?

4) This i think might be the key....when i got back i looked over my carbs. I was confident I didn't mess with the floats when I cleaned them up, so I wanted to see if their was anything else that might be odd. Got real close and looked at every angle, that's when I noticed my mix screws. Their at the top, and for my year (1980) theirs supposed to be a cap on them, but i know the previous owner got rid of them so that it would be more accessible. What i noticed is that my left mix screw was higher than my right one....significantly. My left screw looked leveled/flush with the carb casing, but the right screw was probably a few turns in, so it was noticeably deeper into the hole. I know that this screw is what controlls the air/gas ratio, any chance that it could be whats causing my lack of gas in the bowl?

Any help is much appreciated.

The mixture screws don't affect the fuel level in the float bowls. The screws should be pretty much adjusted the same on both care. A good starting point is setting them 1 1/2 turns out. The PO may have adjusted them like that to hide a problem. More likely they are set that way because who ever messed with them last did not know what they were doing.