So I took a clean gear lube bottle and put some gas in it and hooked it up to the carb directly. It made no difference.
The thing was running bad today altogether without even a load on it. It started surging when it first started and then seemed to work itself out of it for a few minutes, then back to surging and finally it died. No load at all on it.
I checked to see how much gas the pump was pumping and it seems pretty weak to me. I will be changing that out for sure, but I am not confident it will solve my problem. I fear it will need to go back to the shop.