I know we aren't supposed to reply to old threads, but hey, it is my thread. I just wanted to give a quick update to anyone who was following along or might land here in a future search, as I finally solved the problem.
If you have followed this thread then you know that I have replaced or reworked just about everything that could possibly be causing my issues. One thing that I had actually suspected early on was the reed valves. Upon removal and inspection, they appeared to be fine. If I held a flashlight to the back of the reed blocks I could see just a minute amount of light around the perimeter of a couple them. I was told that this was normal and crankcase pressure would cause them to seal completely. So I put on new gaskets and kept searching for answers.
After exhausting every possible culprit, I finally came back to the reeds. Since my problems centered around hard starting and intermittently dropping one cylinder at idle, I decided that maybe it just wasn't making enough crankcase pressure at idle to seal the reeds. When I pulled the carbs again, if I rotated the flywheel by hand, I could hear air escaping the reeds on the down stroke, but only on one cylinder. I bit the bullet and dropped 75 bucks on a set of Boyesen power reeds (kit #133) and installed them. The motor now starts great and runs perfect! I have never heard this thing idle more beautifully. So although there were a number of things contributing to my problem, the main culprit seems to have been the reeds. Thank you to everyone who offered suggestions and hopefully this thread will help others who are experiencing similar issues find a solution.
