I kind of intentionally didn't list the symptom because I didn't want to write an overly long intimidating thread if no one had any experience anyways. Here is my most pressing issue and I know this sounds unbelievable simple but believe me I have spent way to much time messing with it. I cannot get the fuel bowl needle to seat properly. I have a new needle as well as the one that was in there and I have played around with every position of the floats you can bend them to. As a result the thing wants to overfill with fuel which in theory is making it run really rich. now that I write that it seems really simple but I have a feeling their are other things going on because every now and then I have had brief periods where it would seat properly but it still was running really rough, not wanting to idle and not getting full power.

What makes me think it isn't necessarily just this is that The only way to get it to start is to give it a shot of gas mix from a spray bottle and then leave the choke on. It will idle high for maybe 10 sec and then it backfires through the carb and dies. Liking to run with the choke on tells me the carb is running lean not rich. 

It does have a new fuel pump as well. 

How much head pressure does the new pump make? Try connecting a small gas tank just a few inches above the float and see if that works. 

From several hrs of terrestrial-bound 2-cycles, one of the odd things I found that made improvements all 'round was to get the best plugs I could find, usually NGK's. 

If you have primary and secondary compression, gas, air, and a spark - toss it and buy a a pizza!

Saturday I decided to double check the timing. I didn't think the key was sheared but I thought maybe the stator / pick coil plate had been rotated some because the way ran just seemed like the timing was 10° or so off. When I pulled the flywheel, sure enough the key was sheared. Usually with a sheared key it won't run at all because it will be so far off. Fixed that but the bowl was still flooding and it still wouldn't idle well even if the bowl was filled and fuel pump disconnected. (I had put a new NV and float in. 

I determined that the valve was definitely seating but the pump was giving enough pressure to force the floats into the gas and lift the valve seat which is why it was flooding. This was a stock pump though so the problem had to be in the float mechanism still. Now when I got this project it was a project and the guy had a box of about 10 bing 54's. I had grabbed the cleanest body, bowl and slider, cleaned it more and put all new internals in. So I looked through the other carbs sitting there and I noticed a small stamp most of them were stamped 54/38/xxx  but 2 have a 54/36/xxx stamp. I then noticed that the NV seats on the two with the /36 stamp where 1/3 of the diameter of the others. Obviously this reduction in area will allow the valve to hold far more fuel psi. Since the 277 takes a 36mm carb this also seemed to jive better (even though I don't know what the numbers really are) . I cleaned that one up got it on and it seems to be running much better and it no longer over fills the bowl.