In article ,
"wallster" wrote:

Thought this was a nice little story. My brother has a lawn tractor that
has been eluding us. Seems sporatically she just dies, with no warning, hot,
cold, whenever.
Checked spark, ignition, carb, kill switches, you name it we checked it out.
After a
couple weeks of this we were throwing in the towel and (gasp) considering
taking it in to have it repaired. My brother is not a real mechanical guy,
in fact, he's not even close. I have torn apart just about everything I've
ran across and repaired it, restored it or just plain took it apart and put
it back together.
So yesterday, he calls me and says, "i'm a genius... i fixed the tractor"
completely shocked, i asked how. It seems the GAS CAP VENT HOLE was dirty
and creating a vacuum. So simple, but overlooked.
So the next time you're stumped, go back and check the little things... ya
never know!

walt

Back in the early 70's I worked with a 'biker type' wanna be. Thing was
he didn't know squat about bikes other than they looked and sounded
'cool'.

Anyway, one day he starts beaming about a Harley he'd heard about...
IIRC it was a 'Pan Head', and had a glitch in it that had finally ****ed
off it's old owner... another 'biker type' who did know a little about
bikes, and should have known better.

Pretty much the same deal as Walt's post above. The guy spent years
trying to find the problem, but could never get it to run more than a
few minutes at a time. If it sat a few hours, it would again be ok.

He thought it had some thermally aggravated issue, but could never find
it.

So wanna be recruits me (who neither knows, nor cares about bikes) to go
look at it with him.

It was nasty... chrome right and left fore and aft. 23 foot forks poking
out everywhere, 'suicide' shift, silly looking handle bars you had to
reach almost straight up for, matching skull laden 'sissy' bar... I
could go on and on. (Wanna be also discovered he wasn't quite heavy
enough yet for it's cool chrome kick starter, but was on it.)

It also sported a sassy little custom fuel tank with matching un-vented
cap! Imagine that... On the way back I told wanna be that was very
likely the stalling issue. He went back that night, bought it, and with
the cap loose rode 25+ miles to my place where we drilled him his very
own custom vent hole.

Far as I know, he's still be riding it...

Erik