Tonight I took another kick at the can. The little engine is much happier with the new cam, but still refuses to settle in at a nice slow speed. It will run all day at mid range to high speeds, but it peters out and just quits at low speed. The internal friction and bearing friction has faded away to almost nothing with all of the running it has been doing, so its not dyeing out from frictional load. I'm running out of ideas here. I mix 2 cycle oil with my Coleman fuel to keep the Viton O-rings lubricated, and as I ran the engine tonight I'm getting a lot of oil dripping out of the cylinder on one side, very little out of the cylinder on the other side. I will pull the piston out of the leaky side on the weekend to see if perhaps the ring is damaged. (I do have a spare). I have good compression, but it does leak down if I turn it by hand and hold it on compression. I doubt very much that it is leaking at the valves, or I would be able to hear it hissing at the carb or exhaust pipe. There is so little that you can adjust on these engines. Basically it comes down to ignition timing or carb needle valve setting, and I have tweaked both of them in both directions with varying success, but still no nice idle. I am going to do a little research and see if I can find anything enlightening on ignition timing. I have always used about 15 to 20 degrees advanced timing on my hit and miss engines, but I'm not sure if that is right for an engine like this or not.
