I couldn't find a more suitable forum to post this in, so here goes.

I keep the gas can for my lawnmower outside so my garage doesn't fill with fumes. In the past week someone stole it. My plan is to keep a 1 gallon can with lots of sugar mixed in outside, and hope that it too gets stolen and dumped in the theif's gas tank. How much sugar does it take to ruin an engine? Would enough sugar be soluble in one gallon of gas? Would the gas smell like sugar?

well a friend of mine dissolved 15 styrofoam coolers in 3 gallons of gas so i dont think it will be a problem to dissolve stuff in it.

i would think about 4-5 cups would suffice.


a better idea to kill his engine would be to fill it with half a gallon of gas and the rest diesel.

What did he need napalm for? Or should I not ask? :)

I thought diesel could be run in unleaded engines in very small quantities? Diesel is just harder to ignite, which at most would cause a crank-no-start. So unless he burned up the starter or cranked until the engine was hydrolocked, I wouldn't think it would do damage. I thought it was gas in diesel engines that did serious damage. But I could be wrong. Maybe I'll do 50-50 gas/diesel and mix sugar in with that. Thieves make me so angry.

Probably a cup in a gallon would do it. I went to auto school and someone dumped a load of sugar into a small diesel engine gas tank, it works! Once the sugar fires up, it crystallizes and scores the crap out of the cylinder walls.

For pranks, we used to leave an empty maple syrup container behind someone's car and take the gas cap off. We poured nothing in the gas tank, just let the person wonder if his car was dosed, or not.

Bob

According to myth busters, sugar in gas will do nothing to your engine. I would set the gas out and just wait for the bastard and .....well I think you know the rest.