Mark Maras

Visibility is still around 1/4 mile here. We're supposed to get some relief from it in a day to a day and a half and then a bit of rain that should clear more smoke out. Until then, it's N95s.

Portland. We're scrambling around here. As of this morning, more than 500,000 have evacuated their homes in Oregon. That's 1/10th of the population and most of those are on the west side of the state. Several small towns have burned to the ground and now the fires are heading towards larger towns. Molalla and Oregon City have been evacuated. One half mile visibility due to smoke yesterday. About the same today. The smoke is so dense you can look at the sun at noon without squinting. It's just a red dot in a dirty orange sky. The smoke goes up to around 10,000' and prevents fire fighting air drops from being used and firefighters on the ground from finding the fires. Rescue vehicles can't get to some areas. Yesterday they pulled ALL the firefighters back in to regroup and attack again. As of this morning none of the fires around Portland are contained. Parking lots are full of RVs and tents here in town. Hotels, Motels are full and we still have Covid-19 to deal with. We could use your prayers folks.

The metal FelPro gasket is my choice. Have you considered trying to straighten the warped flange? An oxy-acetylene torch, hammer and dolly would probably get it close enough to seal.

Home depot $4.94.

I doubt the shaft is made of stainless steel. Typically the bright finish is hard chrome over a higher carbon steel.

The oiling looks OK to me. Did you clean the oiling tube? The holes can become restricted with sludge. A torch tip file works wonders for opening them up.

A small amount escapes at idle. A towel along the edge is enough to catch it. Don't rev it with the cover off though (VOE), you'll spend the rest of the afternoon cleaning up the mess on the fender well.

The pressure reading from the auxiliary gauge is the best test but I'd have started it up by now. Oil flow up to the head indicates the oil pump is pumping. On initial start-ups I normally leave the valve cover off to check the oil flow to each cam lobe and watch the pressure gauge.

A feeling of entitlement and a lack of empathy. The two sides of the same narcissistic coin. Perhaps the origin of the term "dead right".

I'd be tempted to put (grind) a bit more taper in the leading edge.

Much better.

It looks like an over-inflated Z balloon to me.

Coughing from the carbs or tail pipe? I'm thinking it may be running lean. Is it possible that you changed the float setting when it was pushed with the straw? Also, did you remove or inspect the needle valve for crud?At this point, I'd pull both float chamber tops and compare the fuel levels.

I can think of one person!

The WD-40 straw is a great idea. I'd also pull the float cover, inspect the needle valve for foreign matter holding it open, float and float pivot to find the reason for the excess fuel.