Leaking reed valves. 1970 60 hp

Hi,
I just aquired this older 1970 Johnson 60 HP. Seller said that he had problems with making this motor get to hi RPM under the load.

I replaced the head gasket just in case. The compressions checked out to be good: 130, 130, 135 (Cyl. 1,2,3 in order)

I noticed that the compression would not hold in the crank case as I would rotate the flywheel manually. Cylinders 1 and 3 whould just "back fire". I removed the carbs and sprayed some fogging oil in the reed valve cage when a piston was at TDC. So when the piston went into the power stroke I would notice lots of hissing and bubbling from in between the reed valve petals. I took the reed valve plate out and could not really find anything that might have get stuck between the reed cage and the thin reed petal. To the n-a-k-e-d (for some reason this was censured by the posting service) eye they look ok. If i blow into the cage some of the reeds open slightly and shut right away but others would very slowly retract to the shut position.

Does this mean that the reed petals are deformed and need to be replaced? Can I just flip them over? Note: they are made of stainless steel I think or any other type of metal. I heard that people use G-10 fiber plastic for this purpose. What can you suggest?

Thank you. I really want to ressurrect this beast. Please help me?

As far as the reeds go, it is not so much how fast they react, but whether when they close completely.

So if you take the leaf plate assembly out, hold it up towards the light so you can see thru it (front to back) there shouldn't really be any light shinning thru where they seat. I don't have the specs for the actual amount of gap they can have if any (sometimes it is a very small amount, like .002) or something similar. Eitherway, it is a very tiny gap if any.

As far as flipping them over, look at it like this. If they do not fully close at rest in the position they are currently in, apparently they have a little bend to them. So flipping them over would make them seat more "possibly", but would also take a bit more positive pressure to force them open and could possibly cause them to fatigue and break IMO.

The book says -----------" do not turn reeds over "-----------------Check under the flywheel--Clean distributor cap / rotor / replace anti-reversing spring / set points to 0.010"----Make sure high speed jets in bottom of carburetor bowls are cleaned ( remove ) them.