Thank you very much, Hondaman. I was hoping an expert like you would reply. I am still wondering if the distorted tubes are what killed my bike's performance 
As a side note, I just bought those boots a couple years ago. Where I live, it is impossible to find ethanol-free gasoline.
Yeah, the ethanol is at 99% of the stations here, too. AFAIK, there is only 1 station with 1 pump of 'real 85 octane gas within 20 miles of my house. I installed new velocity stacks on my 750 about 3-4 years ago, and they are still fine. The old ones, like so many, were so brittle that I broke them out in pieces by cutting the outer end up to the box with [wire] dykes on both sides, then pinched with Channel-Lock pliers until they shattered, to get them out. In 2005 I had sealed around their shrunken edges so they would not leak, but had not removed them from the carbs: once I did remove them, they were doomed!
Although, I also recently discovered by accident that if you drop one of them into xylol for about 5 days, they become as flexible as baloney for about 2 days, and much larger. As the xylol escapes it, they shrink to about 95% of their original size (which was big enough to seal the airbox again) and become just as hard as before. So, I experimented with a "shrink-to-fit" method on a spare set of airbox & carbs, and whaddya know, it worked! I think this could be a good short-term solution, sort of like shining up fuseblock clips, for the 'poor college kid' rider like I was.
