A diaphragm that has been in service for some considerable time, then is taken out and allowed to dry, might work a while longer, but.... if you want to mow the yard or till the garden, it is foolish to go in and clean the carburetor and not install new elastomer parts, IMHO>
Rubber parts fail. If you have the carb apart anyway, replace every damn rubber part in it... seals and washers, diaphragm and everything. B&S will sell you a "rebuild kit" that has everything in it. If there are any rubber parts in the thing that haven't failed yet, they are on their way to failing anyway so just change it beforehand.
And keep the old diode as a spare!
--scott
I don't know what the part cost, but it should not have been more than a few dollars. Chances are if the new part was put in it would be good for life. If I had gone that far I would not worry about an inexpensive part. Even if it had been an expensive part I would use the new one and maybe save the old one.
Reminds me of what hapened at work. We had a large varitable speed moror drive to go out. Called in a factory man to work on it. He found two bad diodes. There was a third diode (three phase circuit) and I asked him to replace it also. He said it was $ 200. I told him to go ahead. If it went out that $ 200 was nothing to what it would cost to get him back in and the ammount of downtime on the equipment.
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