Does it really mess up the engine?
In: Engineering
This topic is an excellent reminder for me of how easily and widely misinformation was spread and accepted before the Internet. When I was a teenager in the ’70s, it was common, accepted knowledge that sugar in the tank would fill the pistons and cylinders with gummy, partially combusted sugar and ‘seize the engine’ as we used to say, meaning cause it to seize up, cease to function. This was false, apparently, it’s now well-known that sugar won’t dissolve in a nonpolar solvent s/a gasoline, apparently. Known by most who answered this question, at least (all but one at this point).
Your car is a robot. Robot doesn’t drink sugar. They drink gasoline.
Human can digest sugar. That’s why human can drink sugar. Meanwhile human isn’t robot, so human can’t drink gasoline.
Each individual digest different thing.
My grandfather used to tell that during WW2 they put gasoline in sugar and eat it, if capture was certain. Sugar in gas tank seems pointless.
I’m sorry why are we putting food in a car’s gas tank? That’s for gas
The sugar will travel to the fuel injectors in the engine and melt, blocking them completely and requiring an engine rebuild
Mythbusters tested this… Seems sugar runs just fine, if you really want to screw it up apparently bleech does the trick.
Mothballs give you higher octane which is weird but something they also tested.
People that put sugar in gas tanks are too ignorant to know that sugar doesn’t dissolve in gas. It does not ruin engines, it (mostly) just settles at the bottom of the tank.
It may also clog up the fuel filter, which is often located with the fuel pump inside the tank. But it will almost never reach the engine.
Sugar doesn’t actually mess up the fuel. Sugar doesn’t dissolve well in gasoline, so it just sinks to the bottom of the tank like sand.
In that sense it’s about as bad as sand or any other particulate solid. It’ll clog filters and damage the pump if it gets sucked up.
Sugar is unable to disolve in gasoline or ethanol but can in the little water in the ethanol. This will bring a tiny amount in the cylinders where it could gum up the cylinders.
But the real issue is that it will eventually make it’s way into your fuel filters and clog it.
There is a fine mesh before the pump designed to block what would damage the pump. It is relativelly big. Then you have the fuel filter itself, which is very fine. Some sugar crystals will pass thru the mesh, but then get trapped in the filter. With time, no more filter capacity and you get fuel delivery issues.
Also, sugar shoshing around will wear itself and break into smaller pieces. What initially couln’t pass may be able to now pass througj the mesh.
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