Jake:

I have an '81 non-California.  After you get
it started when cold, is there any evidence that
it was flooded?  If not, check your fuel pressure
and delivery when you try to start it cold.

If too much fuel, maybe my experiences will help:

Mine likes to flood when started warm--maybe
half-warm heating up, or cooling down for 20
minutes after being fully warm.  I always start
pedal-to-the-metal and if it doesn't catch
right away, it is flooded.  I have a switch
under the driver seat to turn off the pump and
I crank til it fires, turn the pump back on
and am off.  It starts fine when hot.

The only time mine does this when cold, is very
cold at high altitude--below 20 and above 10,000'.
Then it will flood and never start until pushed
and then huge clouds of smoke as it burns out and
starts.  Well, all past tense.  The pump switch
allows me to get going on my own.  This is a "feature"
of those air-cooleds.  My '76 did it too.  Being dumb,
it took me forever to figure out it was too rich,
not too lean....  Stumbling to that, I put in
a switch to turn off the cold-start injector (if
the thermo-time switch wasn't doing it) and then
a switch to keep it on!  My experience with the
'76 and '81 when cold in thin air is that if they
didn't start instantly, they were flooded.  Never
any trouble down to zero starting in Boulder (5400'.)

                        Richard A Jones
                        Boulder, Colorado