So my good unit free flowed with vane in either position. Pulled the poppet, spring, chamber, and knob... only once and tried the parts in the 2nd unit that wasn’t free flowing without success. Reinstalled parts back in the original working unit and guess what it wouldn’t free flow with crescent facing mouthpiece. UghYou guys ain't going to like this-but if you're using the same seat after all of this swapping out of parts, you may be chasing your tail.
Again, the issue is hard and soft seat separation. This points to the lever and/or seat. <--this presumes the poppet, balance chamber, and orifice are defect free.
Flipped the crescent toward the diaphragm Shazam free flowing again.
Seems to me this is an edgy test and is not a reliable one. Things can be very very marginal to stop a free flow. Whether it’s the differences in a coarsely machined knob, or spring with marginal differences. Soft seats are fairly new on both units. So I’m not sure are we saying if the seat takes a set the free flow test is hit and missed.
Next I’m going to pull the complete barrel out of the working unit and try in the non working unit and see what happens. All for fun.