It's me again, with the continuing saga of my 85 Spree that blew up and I've been reassembling. (History here and here).
Currently my Spree is back to pretty much stock condition - new piston, cylinder, rings, gaskets, air filter, thoroughly cleaned carburetor, and the 'slightly larger' reed set as seen in my other post referenced above. To me the engine runs pretty good. Idles well, doesn't stall. I've been putt-putt'n around the neighbourhood for a couple of weeks to break things in, and sticking close to home in case it just blows up and dies again. Other than one day where it mysteriously fouled up the plug and quit running it's been reliable. I tried doing a subsequent 'plug chop test' and it looked fine to me.
This is going to sound a little vague since I'm not skilled in the art of Spree, but bear with me.
Today I took the Spree into work and I noted that when I'm going on a slight downhill slope it feels a little "*". If I don't move the throttle, the engine sound remains constant like I'm still being chased by the horde of mosquitos, but the Spree has these slight little hesitations you can feel. Going uphill 'feels' better. This isn't new, and it was doing this before the previous engine committed suicide. It gives that feeling that I want to constantly apply more throttle to smooth it out, and that it doesn't really want to 'coast' well. I'm presuming at this point that isn't supposed to do that.
I tried coming down a hill and killing the engine, and the Spree continues to turn the engine down to a certain speed and then you can hear the engine disengage (I didn't note where it cut out at) . I didn't note any * in that phase as I coasted down to a stop.
I'm suspicious that this isn't the engine but in the Spree belt/clutch stuff. Sound reasonable? Is there a good way to verify the clutch/belt without taking the clutch off?
In return, here's a picture of my Spree without all that snow:
