Not far into riding, the exhaust pipe got so hot it's got fingerprints from my glove on it now.
I bought it used, it ran kind of okay at first (attributed that to it sitting quite a while before purchase) but whenever I opened it up, it would start gagging and then stall out. So I rebuilt the carb, it starts and runs beautifully now (I am so proud of myself

I've been reading in your (now our) lovely forum, and it seems that there are all sorts of mechanical things that might cause this. But I want to start with the simplest-- timeframe oriented-- possible explanation. So: is it possible it was the gas-with-oil mix?