UPDATE

I did a thorough inspection of my ignition system Friday to find out what my problem might be.

The coils, spark plugs and everything ese looked fine and tested out with the multimeter as they should.

I also cleaned out the bleeder valve assembly.

Put everything back together and tested it in the tank…..still running poorly. So my next step was to start going through the carb.

I immediately discovered my high-speed packing nut was extremely loose and the high speed needle was as well. I snugged up the nut and adjusted the needle 1/2 turn out from seated and it started right up. It still smoked like a chimney from all the previous fuel loading but the longer I ran it at higher RPM the better it performed.

My conclusion is that it was simply being flooded with an over-rich mixture while at full throttle. I think I may have also had some stale fuel in the carb that didn’t help matters. The bottom plug was being fouled by excess fuel IMHO.

I took it to the lake the following morning (not a casual task in that the lake is over an hour away – which is a long way to drive back if it fails to run on the water). And it started and ran great! I achieved 4200 rpm which is about as good as this motor has ever run.

So for now…. problem solved.

thanks again for all the responses.