Okay, let me first say, I am a dork who never liked reading directions. When I did read the directions on how to adjust the float height in the Clymer and here and elsewhere, I just couldn't grasp what was being said. There is a part that states: "Hold the float so the arm tang is just touching the needle valve plunger - not pushing it down."
This statement drove me nuts and I just couldn't get the float height set correctly. it was ALWAYS off. SO today, needing to do this all again, I sat down and thought it through and what I discovered in my own brain is that, the needle valve is like a toilet valve. When the tank is full, it raises the float and shuts off the valve (water.) If it didn't do this, it would overflow.
So, instead of trying to figure out how to keep the tang from pushing down on the valve needle, I just let it sit on it. Carbs upside down so the floats are just sitting in place. Once I did this, i could correctly measure the top of the float and I settled on 15mm from the top edge of the carb to the top of the float itself. (Larger white section.)
I tried around 17mm which put the fuel level right at the seam of the float bowls but when I gave it full throttle, it starved. So, I set it to 15 which is just above the lip of the bottom section of the carb body. (maybe 3 mm?) And that seems to be absolutely great. I have really good throttle response all the way through the range and the idle seems soooo much better. It still fluctuates but that could be a carb sync issue. I will try all that later.
Anyway, here are a couple of pics (not very good) of what I first started measuring. Sorry I didn't take more as I went. (These are pics with the carbs upright not upside down and there is no way to hold things still. That was part of my misunderstanding.)
(http://www.bolingfordollars.net/Carb_Float/pa030007.jpg)
(http://www.bolingfordollars.net/Carb_Float/pa030008.jpg)