The reason why I stated all of the above is that I don't think any other kind of patch will work well........MAYBE JB weld but its kind of brittle. Aside from becoming degraded and softened by gasoline, I think the biggest enemy of a patch is vibration. As you know, it has plenty of that. That JB weld is a little on the brittle side and does not handle vibration well.

With any kind of patch I'd never feel secure. Every time I started that thing I'd run the blower way too long to make sure the hole did'nt come back and there was no vapor. The down-side of that hole reappearing at an unopportune time could be huge. Poss even worse than the "risk" of putting a small weld bead on it.