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