I tried cleaning up the bearing but I think the black marks are possibly from carbonized oil rather than from the gasket. This thing was running near 6000 rpm for short periods while I still had the bad governor. It's hard to say but scrubbing made very little improvement. I am using a brand new crankshaft so I decided just to get another connecting rod instead of risking damage to the new crankshaft. Hopefully that will fix it. If not, I'll be back! I did pick up a tube of MotoSeal and it looks like a better product than what I was using.
Edit: Just to conclude this thread I did put in the new connecting rod and the problem went away.
Edit: Just to conclude this thread I did put in the new connecting rod and the problem went away.
Last edited: