ORIGINAL: skull1971
Rag gets my vote!!
check the front bearing, had the same problem a coulpe years ago, the seal was ate up.
One of my engines leaks "nicely" like a river from the front bearing and still start/stop
without problems; in fact that makes sure one has good lubrication of that bearing
at least
.
In fact the whole story is a bit funny, most of the people otherwise complain that
they cannot start engine or the engine quits just like that some time, so here we
have something too strange and maybe too simple to fix. I would change the
carb with some carb from OS Max and give a try at least.