Hardhead

Thanks to everyone that's made suggestions on my previous posts. I previously thought my bike was running lean because of backfire from the exhaust and a hesitation past 1/4 turn of the throttle. I replaced the slip-ons with factory debaffled cans which stopped most of the backfire to about normal from what I've read on the site. Replaced my KN filter with my old stock filter, had carbs profesionally checked, cleaned, new NGK platinums, 87 octane with about 3 ozs of Lucas mixed in old gas drained (sat for over a year), fresh fluids, new battery. Mechanically everything is stock not sure if cct's were changed out but I doubt it. Bike has a hair under 18k. Ran the bike about 5 miles around the neighborhood in a weeks time, pulled plugs out to check and they were fouled out. It's running way to rich. Now taking out the carbs we noticed that one of the choke cables that goes to the back carb was cut and the plastic fitting from the same cable that screws into the carb was also broke. Would this cause some kind of vacuum leak that would cause the SHawk to run rich? TPS also stays at 525ohms and drops down to 524 at higher rpms. TPS bad?