Any help would be appreciated.

The click is a centrifugal switch, normally. If the motor does not come
up to speed the switch won't trip. If the contacts (points) are fused, it
won't trip either. This can be remedied by cleaning the points with some
400 sandpaper. WITH THE THING UNPLUGGED AND A MINUTE OR TWO FOR COMPLETE
CAPACITOR BLEED.

Not sure if this is your problem, however. Have you given it a good blast
or two of air? The GFI trips if there's a short. Could be you've got
some gunk in there. I'd try that first. Not the kind of thing you want
to do, bypass a GFI. It's a safety device, after all.

I blasted the motor with air, I'm now going to pull the covers off of the
capacitors and blast that as well. hopefully that will cure the problem.
I'll also try to find the points you're talking about, although with the
small amount of run time, i *hope* that's not the problem.

Wasn't trying to bypass the gfi receptacle. just trying non gfi outlets to
try to pinpoint the source of the problem. At the time, I didn't know
whether the gfi had gone bad or not.

Thanks,

Joe