Wow, you guys ROCK!, Hot start issue on the FAT Performance Rebuild Options

[Minerva's 914]

I have spent the past several hours going thru the threads on CHT Rich / Lean and Hot Start issues from my search on "Hot Start". I am very impressed with the depth of knowledge and research you guys provided. THANK YOU!!!

My situation results from my first long drive in Minerva's 914 post restoration. There have been several short "test" drives without any noticeable issues, however Sunday evening I drove about 30 miles, at night, with air temperatures in the high 60's. Everything seemed to be wonderful, plenty of power and torque, no noticeable issues, other than one and only one time when I experienced a slight lugging or surging of the engine at just under 3,000 RPMs and I reactively downshifted and thought nothing of it. That being said, maybe there is nothing to this but I want to share everything I can remember about that evening, just in case there might be a fuel pressure issue at fault. When I returned home, I was backing it in the garage slowly since it doesn't have the rearview mirror installed yet, nor did it ever have a righthand mirror when the rear tires bumped up against the rain guard rise going into the garage and stopped. As I engaged the clutch I stalled the engine. I switched off the ignition and back on but the engine spun but did not fired at all. I switched it back off and tried again without success. I turn the ignition off and waited a couple minutes and tried again. Nothing. It had all of the sounds and lack of firing as if it had vapor locked as it did years ago before I relocated the fuel pump to the front. The next day and every time since it starts immediately and runs perfectly. I have not yet taken it back out for a long drive.

FAT Performance in CA built the engine with slightly oversized jugs and I remember them saying that I may have to increase the fuel pressure to work with the new engine but I didn't go into any more details about that at that time. I plan to call them tomorrow and ask if that might be something I want to address, even if it doesn't have anything to do with this issue. I'll also call John at Black Forest for his input.

So, I'm thinking that this weekend I should check the fuel pressure, check the CHT sensor and confirm all of the state of tune.

Can you guys suggest anything else or contribute opinions / thoughts on this? The fact that it was a relatively cool evening and the engine did not have time to change temperature relative to the sensor does not seem to be all that similar to the issues others have written about here.

Opinions PLEASE. And thank you in advance.