My bearings could have very well just been ready to shit the bed. The ped sat with the previous owner for 7 years dry as a bone with no fluids in it. I checked everything as best I could before running her (without splitting the case of course). The plug chop (post incident) actually looks great. Nice dark tan/milk chocolate. So, I'm not so sure she was running too lean. I also performed air leak checks after installing the new carb. The air leak check was good. I'm certainly not opposed to the o-ring thang. I'll give it a shot when I rebuild her (in the cooler months because its too damn hot here). For now, I got an '08 Tomos running pretty well for the kid.