I understand the gap and stop and am sure it is fine and has never moved. I've just come back from a water test, nothing I did helped at all. So far I cleaned the carb within an inch of it's life (am sure it's not carb) and checked the filter screen on the fuel pump. I didn't think that squeezing the primer ball changed behavior but now I'm not so sure. The motor runs flawless at idle, even in neutral at high rev, but put it in gear and try to go and it surges, kind of oscillates if you know what I mean, almost stalling, then picking up, then almost stalling and inevitably does. Could that be a weak fuel pump? If I squeeze the primer ball hard while it's doing that it certainly doesn't just fix everything, but a couple times I thought that doing so I might be able to level out the surging and almost get proper behavior at mid throttle but I certainly can't get WOT even if squeezing the ball, it stalls. Can a fuel pump fail such that you squeeze to a "hard ball" even though you're not pushing fuel all the way to the carb? In other works, is it possible the fuel pump is bad and I can't overcome all problems just by squeezing?
What would you do next? Remember that squirting mixed fuel from a spray bottle into the carb throat makes this all go away, so it has to be a fuel issue right? Would you buy a fuel pump rebuild kit next if me? Or a new pump? How do these pumps actually generate pressure? Is the surging behavior telltale of anything? All I can think of doing next before giving up and taking to a mechanic is to replace/rebuild the fuel pump.