oh i just read that its a myth. sugar in the tank doesn't spoil
the engine beyond repair.
Judging from the entries made on one police blotter after
another, cars around the nation are having their gas tanks sugared
by those whom their owners have displeased. Why is this happening?
Because, according to widespread belief, sugar poured into a gas
tank will turn into a poor man's version of liquid cement and
quickly render the vehicle's engine unfit for anything but a
junkyard. In theory, the sugar dissolves into the gasoline, then
travels along the fuel lines into the engine, where the heat of the
vehicle's operations melts the sweetener into a dense sludge that
gets into every nook and cranny of the engine. The sucrosed engine
seizes and halts the vehicle in its tracks, but the real damage
comes when the engine cools and the sludge hardens to rock-like
consistency. Only the replacement of the entire engine will render
the car fit for use again, says popular wisdom; otherwise, it's
kiss your jalopy goodbye.
It is for such reason that this theory is so fervently cherished
it appears to grant, for the price of a 5 lb. bag of sugar, the
ability to effect great and irreparable harm to an adversary's most
prized possession. The touted mode of vengeance is both inexpensive
and easy to carry out, a combination that seems to put the power of
getting even into the hands of anyone, no matter how
disadvantaged.
However, revenge fantasies aside, this snippet of popular lore
turns out not to be the sure and deadly car killer the
retribution-minded would want to believe it is. As with many grand
schemes, it lives more vividly in its imagining than in
reality.
Sugar doesn't dissolve in gasoline, as a researcher at Berkeley
confirmed in 1994. Forensics professor John Thornton labeled
sucrose with radioactive carbon atoms and mixed it with gasoline,
then spun the concoction in a centrifuge. After the undissolved
particles were removed, the liquid's radiation level was measured
to determine how much sucrose had become part of the gasoline. The
answer was extremely little: the equivalent of less than a
teaspoonful per 15-gallon tank of gas.
Because sugar doesn't dissolve in automotive fuel, it doesn't
carmelize, and so it does not turn into the debilitating gunk this
well-known entry in the revenge canon calls for.
Instead, sugar poured into a car's gas tank stays intact. While
sugar could still cause harm if it reached the engine (but in the
same way sand would, by virtue of its being a granular contaminant,
not because the sugar would turn into a syrup), even that potential
harm is generally prevented by filtration. At the end of the pickup
tube in the gas tank is a "sock" that blocks solid materials, so
the fuel gets through, but precious little that's not liquid does.
Further up the line is the fuel filter, and what may have got
through the "sock" does not get past it.
Yet, even though the sugar will not reach the engine in either
syrup or solid state, it can clog the fuel filter or the fuel
injectors, a circumstance which could stop a car. A little sugar in
the tank could be dealt with by no more than having to change the
fuel filter a few times, but a heavier sugaring would require the
gas tank be removed from the car and dumped out. Tom and Ray
Magliozzi (the hosts of radio's Car Talk) say it's not a big job
for a good mechanic to drop the tank and clean it out; the process
would likely cost the car's owner somewhere between $100 and $200.
Though $100 to $200 is an appreciable sum, it is a far cry from the
wished-for outcome of forcing the victim to have to replace the
engine or scrap the car.
Ironically, there may soon come a day when each of us happily puts
sugar in our gas tanks. In 2002 researchers at the University of
Wisconsin at Madison happened upon a relatively easy way to extract
hydrogen from a glucose solution: heat the sugar solution to 392°F
and pass it over a platinum-based catalyst to break it down into
hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The resultant hydrogen could then be
directed into a fuel cell that would power a car, with the carbon
dioxide released into the atmosphere.
The potential for using sugar to fuel cars doesn't end with the
notion of using the hydrogen extracted from glucose solutions. In
2004 researchers at Sandia National Labs began applying for patents
covering ways to convert the glucose itself into energy, with an
eye to using the sugar itself as a fuel source.
Yet the science of the matter aside, we expect reports of sugared
gas tanks to continue to appear on police blotters everywhere for
as long as gasoline engines power cars. The desire for revenge runs
strong so strong that it will not let such a little thing as
facts get in its way.
