Joe i havent had a chance to work on the homelite engines yet. I have a pretty extensive thread on the ryobi 31 cc engines. http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_8479610/tm.htm

Some of the information on there may not apply to your engine but much of it will as we found the most important factors in making more power on a stock unmodified engine anyhow are.

#1 Get the best ring to cylinder seal you can possibly get. measure your ring gap and see what it is. a frank bowman ring may be a very good investment. the best way to tell what your cylinder seal is is with a leakdown testor. If your cylinder has large scores its gona have a poor seal no matter what you put in it. see all the info i put in the thread on leakdown testing. anyhow ring seal is very important.

#2 upping your compresion ratio by decreasing or removing your base cylinder gasket. be very carefull not to get piston to head interferance. there are methods for checking this on the ryobi motors that will work for yours to.

#3 fitting a carburetor that has a larger venturi size. the stock carbs are so puny.

#4 A good free flowing muffler. to large a opening dosent seem to make a problem at least on the ryobis.

#5 check your exhaust port timming. some guys got good results increasing there port timming to 150 degrees. this is all explained on the thread. I didnt have any usefull affect from this mod but i was working on a different cylinder than the other guys were. they say they did and i belive them as there test data proves it. I have my suspicions as to why mine made no diff but i havent had time to prove it out.

Anyhow all of this is pretty easy to do and dosent require any great special modifications. you can make your own leakdown tester for pretty cheap. under 20 bucks i would say or maybee less depending on your ability to scrounge parts.

You really need to get a tach so you can do a before and after analisys to see what worked and what didnt and by how much.

keep us updated on your progress and please lots of pics.