I've been fighting with my stage II with pods for a couple weeks. Have had a tough time. At first, it would stumble like crazy off a stop. It turns out my floats were way off. I don't know how they got there, around 8mm. I now have everything set the way Dale says to. 14mm float, 150 mains, 135 pilots, middle setting on needle, mixture 3.5 turns out. It runs pretty poorly like that. So much so that my frustration has prevented me from even taking it out of the garage (not to mention that I've been busy).
Anyway, as it is, it starts a bit rough with choke on, smooths out after about 20 seconds. Choke needs to stay on a bit longer. I give it a touch of gas and it seems pretty good. If I give it a good blip (like 1/2 throttle), flames shoot out my tailpipe and it makes all sorts of funny sounds, but not loud backfires, just crackling and popping.
I know this is useless information without test driving it. Any suggestions?