As Bob says, Matt, on "Diesel Creek", on You Tube, does this routinely, watch some of his videos to get an idea of what he uses for tools, and what he brings with him to do a start up on hibernating equipment.
His mission on his site is to try to save old equipment from going to the scrapyards. I just watched him start up a 6-71 Detriot stationary fire sprinkler pump engine that was in an old steel mill for 50 years last night on his station. The engine had last been serviced in 2016, so it had been idle for 7 years. Most of the stuff he gets running has been setting for decades though.
Also another one that bought an early 60s D8 with a pony motor start on another you Tube channel is "Ambition Strikes", The guy bought a piece of property on a mountain in Northern Idaho, and he needed a big dozer to recut the road from the highway, to the home site. He had more than his share of breakdowns right after he took possession of the D8. He did most of the repair himself, and finished the road cut with his newly aquired, 60 YO dozer.
The good thing about diesel equipment is that even decades old fuel will still run an engine, unlike gasoline that after a year or two won't even light with a torch if dumped on the ground.
From my own eperience with diesels, you need the best batteries you can get, because sustained cranking to bleed injection lines on a on a diesel is really hard on batteries, and starters. When I serviced diesel equipment on jobsites, and changed fuel filters, I always only cranked them for 10-15 seconds at a time, then let them cool down, to keep from burning up starters when purging the fuel systems. Many manufacturers have a feature on the lift pumps (fuel pump) that can be operated manually to purge air, but some do not have that feature, and have to be cranked with the starter to purge the system. Some have electric pumps, but you're not going to have an electric pump on a Cat engine of that age.
On using ether, it's really hard on any engine to run on ether, and if the intake manifold had grid heaters in it, you can blow the intake to shrapnel in a second. Be carefull when using ether, I only use it spareingly, and as a last resort when starting diesels, as well as gas engines. The ether shortcut, can really ruin parts quickly, and your in for some big expense, by trying to save a few minutes of troubleshooting time.
IDI engines tend to drop prechambers out of the heads when using ether, and once the prechamber comes loose it gets compressed between the piston, and cylinder head, rendering the engine junk.
Detroit 2 cycles seem to need ether to start in coldest weather, some even had factory installed ether cold start systems on them, operated from the drivers seat.
In the "Diesel Creek"videos, he is pretty conservative when trying to start old equipment when it comes to using ether. He'd rather it starts without it, but sometimes you need that little bit of pesuassion when starting something that has been dormant for decades.
I hope some of this info is helpful......
