82 Maxim Carb Problems?

I picked my wife up an old 82’ Yamaha Maxim. It will only idle with
the choke on, as soon as you kill the choke it dies and as soon as you
give it any gas it dies. I’m guessing it’s the carbs. I took the air
filter off and shot some carb cleaner spray up into the 2 intakes with
it running and managed to get it to rev up a bit but then it started
shooting this nasty looking brown crap that smells like gas out of the
hole below and centered between the two intakes when it revs. Is there
any way to fix this thing without totally taking the carbs off? Any
suggestions if I do have to take them off? I cleaned out the tank and
checked the petcock and they’re both clean. It did sit for at least a
year before I bought it. Also if anyone has a service manual for this
thing on the computer that I could get off of them I haven’t had time
to order one yet.

 

Congratulations. You are the 50 millionth motorbike rider to post this
exact same symptom. Your idle jets and idle passages are plugged up
with gum and varnish.

It's possible to clean the junk out of your carbs using aerosol carb
cleaner if you can figure out which hole is the pilot air intake. It's
probably the small hole on the right as you look down the intake. But
you can't go squirting a whole lot of carb cleaner down that hole with
the engine off, the carb cleaner can get into the engine and dilute
your oil. A little bit at a time with the engine running at a fast idle
should help. Otherwise, you're going to have to pull the carbs off and
do a proper job of cleaning them.

I've probably posted what to do about this problem about 100 times in
rec.motorcycles.tech. Google up "idle jets" in rec.motorcycles.tech...

 

Is there an FAQ for this group? Because this ought to be at the frigging
top of the list.