I needed to replace bulbs in the shop lights above my '63 Suburban. This thing's been sitting there for just about ever, while I got more interested in building planes than wrenching on trucks.
It hadn't run for months, other than occasionally turning it over to keep the carburettor wet. I had tried rather hard to start it about 6-9 months ago, and utterly failed. So today I was getting ready to duct-tape a 3-gallon boat tank to the damn thing and just get it running. Before I did I decided to go ahead and play with ether and gas down it's little mechanical gullet -- and damned if it not only started, but kept on running! This is kind of a mechanical marvel, because the gas that's in the tank is more kerosene than gasoline.
So, anyway, I got it pulled out of the shop, tickled my fear of heights by replacing bulbs in my lights (14 feet off the ground -- god, I hate doing that), and got it back in (after it quit, and I had another mild session of flogging it with raw gas and ether).
So, I'm (a) happy that I got the job done, and that maybe it's not as bad as I thought, and (b) puzzled as heck as to why it works _now_!