gas in breather oil cup?

Today I pulled the oil cup off the air breather assembly and noticed a gas smell. Now I know the gas gets sucked out of the carburator upstream of the breather assembly, so the gas is relatively close to the oil cup, but I don't really think the oil looked or felt terribly dilluted in the cup. However, I did distinctly smell gas in the oil cup.

Any thoughts on what may cause this? Would an exhaust valve not seating and remaining partially open allow for this (and also my smoke)?

Thanks in advance!

If you have the same low reading in 2 cylinders beside each other, its indicative of a breached head gasket.

If you run the cylinders dry and find one with low compression, then u put a bit of oil in through the spark plug hole and it raises the compression, its indicative of eaither a cracked ring, stuck ring, or worn rings/sleeves.

If adding oil has no effectm then it is a valve problem.

I think this is what the manual says, please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

I am confidant you'll find that the owner's manual says to (a) retard engine control lever by pulling it ALL the way back, and allow the engine to idle briefly (this helps prevent "run-on"), then (b) push the ignition button all the way in (or throw the ignition switch, whichever A has) to stop the engine.

If your governor allows the engine to be shut off by fuel starvation, it is not properly adjusted, although I don't know if this is really a problem or not. If the engine can still develop enough RPMs to have usable power, probably not.

Incidentally, blow-by can most DEFINITELY cause the oil to smell like gas. My used-car-salesman uncle taught me that. It was one of the things he used to decide REAL FAST if the problem was likely to be valves or rings. He could also HEAR the difference, if the engine would run slowly enough!

One final word: it is often a waste of time to replace the rings without doing the valves, and vice versa. One component suddenly doing its job effieciently after years of partial failure will often reveal partial failure in the other. Just my opinion, not "the Truth."

The wet oil on plug #4, and the gas smell, make me pretty sure you have a bad oil and/or compression ring on #4. My humble opinion above about valves and rings at the same time still stands; but in this particular case I guess you could try just replacing the ring(s) on #4, if you are CONFIDANT the previous owner did a good job otherwise.

Sorry for my haste.