sugar in your gas tank.

[Timothy Keith-Lucas]

Everyone knows that if you pour sugar into the gas tank of a combustion engine the result is ruining the engine, as in, burning sugar in the cylinders and a massive seizure. Used by the underground in WWII and by teenaged vandals ever since.

 

Nope. Look at the picture below. At the bottom, a tablespoon of granulated sugar. The yellow stuff is gasoline, and it's been sitting on my desk for several months now. The answer is (and it helps to be married to a chemist here) that sugar does not dissolve in gasoline. You might clog a fuel filter, and it could be a mess to clean up, but no.

 

 

The chemist is also archivist for a WWII museum. Apparently what did work was a hand grenade with a rubber band holding the spoon in place. Gasoline does dissolve rubber.

 

On an unhappy note, a 10 year-old friend of mine got hospitalization level burns Friday evening when he lit a match in a small garage restroom where alcohol-based hand cleaner had been spilt. I would not have guessed that an explosive fuel/air mixture would have resulted.

[jbcollier]

The requirements for successful combustion are actually quite narrow.  But, when they are in place, it doesn't take much to set it off.

 

You can put cigarettes out in gasoline all day long and nothing will happen, until...

[Timothy Keith-Lucas]

Damned good point, JB. My young friend hit the jackpot on fuel/air mixtures. Let's be careful, folks. Hand sanitizer has been the culprit in a bunch of hand fires for people lighting cigarettes immediately after rubbing in a squirt of the stuff.

 

Good news; he's been released from the burn unit with a huge bandage down one leg, and is home again.

 

Yeah, we play with fuel/air mixtures every time we adjust a choke.

[Christopher smith]

FYI-Not sure of the exact figures on range of flammability but I remember a few workers in the nitrocellulose unit at Naval Ordnance Station, Indian Head died when the ether /alcohol mixture lit up back in 1968. Ether has a pretty wide range of mixes with oxygen/nitrogen where it is going to light from a small spark. That is why starter fluid spray works so much better than gasoline, particularly in cold weather. Not sure if anyone  has been talking about hydrogen powered cars being dangerous but they better be extra careful.

[Timothy Keith-Lucas]

There's a related concept that I use when teaching fire extinguisher use. Neither gasoline nor wood actually burn. What burns is a combination of oxygen (in air) and the flammable vapor from each. You have to heat wood or gasoline up to its "flash point," which is when it gives off flammable gas.  For wood that's around 450 degrees F. but for gasoline it's about -45 F. You can't get a log going with a cigarette lighter because every time you remove the lighter the log dissipates the heat.

[IamScotticus]

Prayers for your friends recovery...

Fuel vapor: this is partially why a carbuerated engine is hard to start, no vapor.  There isn't enough heat to produce vapor

Edited May 7 by IamScotticus

[Christopher smith]

We used to spray a shot of ether into the carb in winter and hope there was no backfire. Now, I just wait until warmer weather.