Well XMANS, I think you are on to something. I pulled the engine and checked out the carb/phenolic spacer as suggested, while I can’t tell if it actually leaked, the carb body needed to be honed, there was a slight low spot in the original machining and the phenolic insulator was definitely distorted. The phenolic insulator could have slowly warped just sitting there. I honed the carb body and insulator on some 400 grit paper to make everything flat. The screws holding everything together were tightened to different torque values, I used my trusty click-stop torque wrench to reassemble it to reasonable and equal torque values.

Weather permitting, I will bench run it tomorrow, but flying will have to wait for now.


BTW, love your country. I was in Sydney last July and had a blast.