question of the day

That spring might create a small amount of back pressure on a check ball in the bottom of the pumps cavity. In that case you could have fuel leaking past the check ball and slowly flooding the engine.
Similar example was a carb on a 86 Ford 2.8 ltr V6. Somewhat common fault was extremely rich mixture. Simple repair was to remove the top of that carb and peck the ball with a drift and hammer so the casting conformed to the ball radius again.