got the car fired up a few days ago. 1, 3 & 4 were hot but no.2 stayed cold. thought maybe cap was bad, plug was bad or wire was bad: nope, have spark at all 4. pulling the no. 2 wire while it ran made no difference in the cars idle. also noticed a good amount of fuel leaking from the underside of carb 3&4. tightened up the under body bolts but it still leaked. so, i decided to rebuild.
as i was rebuilding the no. 3&4 carb, i discovered the reason for the fuel leak: the previous owner made a very, very poor attempt at rebuilding the mikunis. the lower carb body mating surfaces had been ground down by hand to remove old gasket material or something. suffice it to say, the uneven mating surfaces now let fuel through. after disassembly, dunking & cleaning, i had to pick up some permatex sealant for gasoline use to seal on top of the new mikuni gaskets and then let it all cure over night and then re-assembly. floats were slightly out of mikuni spec, so made some re-adjustments.
on the no. 1&2 carb, both brass weights that held in the bearings in the pump channels were completely missing! fortunately i have spare parts. prior to rebuilding the carb, by opening the throttle plates right after pulling the carb from the manifold, i discovered that no. 2 was not giving any fuel. no.1 shot fuel alone.
IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO FINISH THE JOB AND FINISH IT RIGHT, PAY SOMEONE WHO WILL. PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE A JOB UN-FINISHED!
mounted the carbs back up and re-connected all the fuel lines. no more fuel leak on 3&4. and all four are golden!
here are a couple of pics:
from trumpet side:
here's video footage of it living and breathing (it's open headers right now):
...SSRs are supposedly on a boat to me.