What would you change with my baffling? Was only in the upper 70's.
This is weird. The more I think about it the more confused I become. This plane has prob close to 350 flights on it. If its a heating problem, I would think it would of showed up long ago.
What about the pipe and header. Could that change things? I'm running a little longer header than Matt which has retarded the power output by a couple hundred rpm.
RM the baffling looks fine. It's similar to mine. The best you can do is to bring it as close to the fins without hitting them as you can. In weedwackers, the baffle is touching the fins in some models. Nothing wrong there.
I've played with header length some and doubt there's anything wrong there.
The needles are plenty fat especially the LS. I've run 2 of these engines so far and both sets of needles were set-up just about the same.
For what its worth, the heads on mine look the same. It doesn't look to me that anything came off the head. Threads look as they do due to the angle of the cut.
It probably would not hurt to send it in to Hobby Services and see what they can do for you. As meticulous as we are with our Pattern engines I believe there was something wrong with the engine. I agree its very strange to have 100+ runs and now it decides to take a dump.