"Hi Jim,
When you say that yo
"Hi Jim,
When you say that you cleaned the carb, do you mean that you took it apart and cleaned it? If not, that's probably what you need to do. It should be disassembled and the jets scrutinized very carefully for any debris.
Then you need to sit down and study all the little nooks and crannies and passageways to familiarize yourself with them.
With the jets removed, take WD-40 or a carb spray with it's little straw and fire it up into the passageway that the jet feeds. At the same time, with the throttle plate fully open, watch to see that the main, intermediate and the idle holes in the carb throat are dumping the fluid. The pressure from that can should have them all puking liquid at a fair clip. You can backflush them by putting the straw over each tiny hole and spraying. Sometimes I use up a couple of cans of carb spray and a can of WD to get one good and clean. Remove the idle set screw and blast that passage out as well. Also any hole you find that you don't readily know where it goes, figure it out (so you'll know) and then blast it with the cleaner.
Check the float hieght (0.388-0.400 inch).
Check the play in the throttle plate shaft to see if it might be too loose and letting air enter the carb there. That could be a problem with any old carburetor that has had that shaft rotated thousands of times. It will cause a lean condition. It needs a bit of play so that it can rotate freely but that's it.
Other things to look for that would make the engine a "choke baby" would include:
Out of time, timing advanced. I see a lot of older engines that someone has worked on and didn't get it timed correctly.
Check the valve lash to make sure the adjustment is in spec to fully open the intake valves. Not common but possible. On most older engines it is usually the case that the valves are too tight. Either way, they should be checked and adjusted. Closely inspect the cam lobes for wear.
Something as simple as a warped mounting flange or torn intake gasket could cause you to suck air and run lean. That 's all I got for now."