Cascade would be nice on a trail bike. No need for the bearing support and all that. Although the chariots do look nice. You can polish them up if you've got patience.
The top plate can stay. However, the little half moon retainer below it needs to come out. Tried using a small impact driver or even a dead blow screw driver?
I've run both. The cascade stuff is nice and fits well, but is a bit heavier and as you mentioned, no bearing provision. How big of a motor are you running? And are you making timing and gearing changes often?
As long as the trash can is tall.
Guess we're all being honest. So that means we're assholes. They have a misfit Facebook group that would be glad to coach you along on your ball joint killing death trap.
Ok, how bad are the needles bent? You can get replacements from quite a few distributors. If it's just the very end where it's pointy, you can use some fine emery cloth and put the needle in a drill and spin it while you pinch the emery around the end. Be careful not to get crazy though.
^ basically it's plugs in the exhaust, two caps on the intakes with a valve stem and pressure gauge. Put 6 psi in it and it should hold for 5-6 minutes.
What bore, stroke, dome cc's, & timing? If a motor was built to run on pump gas, just throwing race fuel with high octane will actually lose power.
What jetting in the carbs?