Now this is real interesting to me, and I'm getting back to that adjustment screw. Because I was in the process of putting a set of 46A carbs back together and planned on bringing them in the house today to do a bench synch on them this was of great interest to me.
So I dug around and found the exploded view of the carbs that came with the rebuild-gasket kits I bought and sure enough, it shows, moving from the slotted end of the adjustment screw toward the pointy end. First the spring, then the metal washer, then the rubber O-ring. This is a reverse of what has been suggested by others.
Also, seeing as how I have two sets of carbs and one of them, the one off the low milage bike, had no indication that anyone had ever taken the carbs apart, I had something to go back and take apart to see how Mother-Honda thought it should have been put together on the factory floor.
They were in the order noted above, spring on screw first, metal washer on top of spring, then rubber O-ring last. I also noticed, on pulling all 4 of the 30+ year old O-rings out that each one of them had a good consistent pattern of distortion of the O-ring where it had sealed the chamber as it crushed into essentially an inverted bowl shape. In that case the washer is used to protect the top of the O-ring from being torn up by the last turn of the spring.
So, based on the diagram I have in hand and the fact the the apparently factory stock carbs were put together in the order mentioned above I disregarded the advice given here and reassembled the carbs as noted.
