Hey all, yes, I went for the carb first. I removed the overflow screw, and there was no leaking from there with the fuel turned back on. I pulled the float bowl and the needle and seat seem to be functioning as they should, with fuel flow stopping when I push the float arm up. The bowl seemed like it wasn't quite pressed against the rest of the carb properly, which might have been the issue or a contributing factor. The floats seemed to be floating, though I didn't read that comment until after the first carb session, so I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the possibility that they might be full of fuel the first time I went through the carb.
Next I changed the filter, added fresh oil, put a little oil under the exhaust valve covers and into the cylinders. Kicked her over a bunch of times with the plugs out to get the oil spread around a bit, and tried starting her. That turned out to be a real challenge, she would almost fire a bit but not quite run with some early kicks. Pulled the carb and cleaned out the jets, and this time I checked to see if the floats were full of fuel - confirmed they are not.
The tab that engages the needle and seat was bent up quite high though, to cut fuel off early, and the bowl was only about half full when I opened it. I figured that might be the cause of my hard starting troubles, so I bent that down a little to allow more fuel into the bowl. Put it all back together and still no fuel coming out of the overflow with the gas turned on. Tried starting again, and same thing. Could get her to run for very brief stints of maybe 20 seconds at most before she would cut out. Sometimes on two cylinders sometimes on one. Discovered that I was getting good spark on one side, and not on the other. Turned out to be the plug. Changed that and got both sides firing. Still having trouble getting her going.
The good news is that there doesn't seem to be any oil showing up in the primary. Between the very brief periods when she ran for a few seconds, and the seven million kicks to make that happen, I'm sure if there was a leak at the crank seal there would be evidence by now. The bad news is the starting issue. She was starting first or second kick every time before this.... I'm beat to a snot from kick start attempts... Do you think this is carb related, or is this something more sinister?
