[quote="bgsengine"[/quote] Yeah and it is more common on the horizontal shaft engines, which I assume you work with mostly.. that happens primarily from people being a little too ambitious with their screwdrivers - really outta be an inch-pounds torque screwdriver handy , you'd be amazed at the "feel" for those low torque specs compared to how tight you can get them by "guesswork"[/quote]
You are correct sir, we work on the old "Easy Spin" horizontal- shaft 3-8 HP Briggs engines. Early on, I was guilty of over torqing those Piusa-Jet carb to tank screws on a couple of engines MYSELF! As I soon learned, tighter is not always better when you have a gasket. You have to let the gasket do its job. We are real careful now and just snug them down (by feel) each one a little at a time so that the carb base goes down evenly. It is kind of like installing a spark plug in one of these aluminum heads. After awhile, you can do it by "feel" w/o stripping it out. (Yes, I've stripped out a couple of those years ago!)
Michael