Sugar in Gas Tank

[Searles Lewis]

We have had problems with our landlord, to the point we have been taken to court, but we won hands down our eviction case-he had no evidence, and had tried with HUD to dispose of our lease, which we had a cop of. We also found out he has multiple convictions for drugs, making him unable to testify legally, tho he had. He's no stable at all.

December 20th, we decided to action a wage garnishment on him, and a neighbor on parole for drugs heard us, and spoke to him-we found an ice footprint, two actually, on our porch. When we drove into town, our car started coughing, and we pulled into a station. My son, home from Afghanistan, tested and found out someone had sugared our tank.

After we took of the fuel filter, we found that the filter had caught most of what turned out we think ,to be prestone. It is however, still hesitating, and idling around 500-800, as we think our son turned it down. It runs fine otherwise, and I've replaced half the spark plugs, will do the second rear half tomorrow, as well as check the IAC after reading here.

Since the new spark plugs, Bosch 4 point plat, the car gets much better gas mileage. I'm also running STP Carbureutor fluid, which helped a lot, and left one spark plug with some burned looking brown, and we found blackened bits on it, and it shone like oil.

So I wanted to ask:
1. What else can I do?
2. We had a car, a plymouth van, 4 years ago quit out, in much the same circumstances. Our landlord helped us then, we were only able to get it partway to start, with large amounts of starter spray. Could he have sugared our last one too? It refused to turn over all the way.

Someone at Autzone suggested it could also have been oil or perhaps transmission fluid. Anyone know how to tell?

[aleekat]

The myth of sugar. http://www.snopes.com/autos/grace/sugar.asp

[twotone95lx]

Originally Posted by Searles Lewis

So I wanted to ask:
1. What else can I do?

Simple. Get a locking gas cap.

[tomj76]

As noted, sugar is not soluble in gasoline, so putting granulated sugar in the tank does nothing more than clog the filter. If a fine enough powder sugar was used that could make it through the filter (I don't know if powdered sugar is fine enough to do this), then it could possibly get into the injectors and clog them as any dust would do.

I'm not certain, but I'd suspect that any sugar that made it into the cylinder would be consumed during combustion, at worst leaving behind a "varnish" like coating.

If the tank was instead contaminated with antifreeze, then you have a different type of problem. Of course the first thing to do is empty and clean the tank. I'm not any kind of expert on how to handle this, I think it could be done without removing the tank through the gasoline fill port. Antifreeze contains substances that could harm the engine, so flushing the tank to remove any antifreeze would be very useful. Antifreeze is water soluble, so part of the cleaning process can be done with distilled water, which is relatively inexpensive. However, you'll also need to remove any water left, which can be done with methanol and still burn cleanly with some water in it.

I'd first siphon out the fuel completely, then flush any remaining coolant with a few gallons of distilled water. Then with the tank as empy as possible, I'd flush it one more time with < 1 gallon of methanol to dissolve any remaining water. I'd run some of the methanol out through the fuel pump, without the fuel filter and into a container to flush that as well.

Once the flush is complete, a gallon of gasoline can be used to flush out the remaining methanol. Although a small amout of methanol mixed with gasoline will not be a problem for the engine, it would be worth flushing this out once more to remove any remaining coolant residue from the tank.

[tomj76]

As far as identifing the contamination, I think you'd have to take a sample for chemical analysis. There is a company often sited here, Blackstone I believe, that will perform such a service.

[12Ounce]

If you can just "burn through" the fuel now in the tank .... using the fuel and getting the tank as low as possible before refilling, you will have gotten through most of the bad stuff. I personally would not plan on cleaning the tank unless other symptoms dictated that I do it. If the tank is finally dropped, I would not introduce water .... swabbing out with shop towels will get it very clean.

After buring through the existing fuel, there are a couple of recommended things:
1. Change the engine oil now, and in a couple of thousand miles. If anything passed from the combustion chamber into the crankcase ... you want to get rid of it.
2. Change the in-line fuel filter.
3. (Optional/as required). Removing the injectors and blasting the injector-ends with brake cleaner will remove any deposits. (Don't soak!) This is good maintenance for any high-mileage engine.

[Searles Lewis]

Originally Posted by aleekat

The myth of sugar. http://www.snopes.com/autos/grace/sugar.asp

I checked it, that's just my title. I think it was antifreeze.

Does anyone know if that would plug the fuel injectors enough that starter fluid would start it, but no fuel would reach the engine? How would you fix something like that?

[Searles Lewis]

Originally Posted by 12Ounce

If you can just "burn through" the fuel now in the tank .... using the fuel and getting the tank as low as possible before refilling, you will have gotten through most of the bad stuff.

Okay, we have done this. When I changed the spark plugs, they had a black sheen, and some blackened bits. I need to do the other 3 today.

We have been adding STP Carb cleaner, it works really well. But my son did something to the idle switch. Is the idle switch part of it? what is it supposed to idle at? When I disconnect the battery it re-idles at first at 1100, and the car is fine. Afterwards it idles at 500-800, and keeps hesitating, and lopes.

Originally Posted by 12Ounce

After buring through the existing fuel, there are a couple of recommended things:
1. Change the engine oil now, and in a couple of thousand miles. If anything passed from the combustion chamber into the crankcase ... you want to get rid of it.
2. Change the in-line fuel filter.
3. (Optional/as required). Removing the injectors and blasting the injector-ends with brake cleaner will remove any deposits. (Don't soak!) This is good maintenance for any high-mileage engine.

Did the fuel filter, it was clean gas on the right going with the flow into the engine, and black clumps of something that felt like antifreeze on the opposite side.

With the injectors-is this something I can do at home? I have a Haynes manual, and have been using STP Carb. What do you think? Are they totally clogged? Could I run 3 bottles thru on engine at once, have it burn it off?

Thanks for the replies, and this one told me what to do very succinctly. It's been 3 weeks, I expected it would clear out by now.

When we ran premium gad and stp thru, after we changed the spark plugs, it ran perfectly until the tank emptied. and we refilled it with normal gas.

[Searles Lewis]

Originally Posted by twotone95lx

Simple. Get a locking gas cap.

Did. A little voice told me a week ago to do that, just a thought, I wish I had done it beforehand. I think he anti-freezed the last car, tried it again this time.

The gas cap is plastic, not metal like the last one I bought ten years ago.

[Searles Lewis]

Just as an observation, I can hear the plugs fire in order when the car runs. I replaced half, and it dropped down to half of the noise. One plug was seriously dirty, the one o nthe end.

Is the noise due to dirty plugs, or the injectors?

Tik-tik-tik, slows down or gets softer at lower speeds, still comes close to stalling when we stop.

What should the idle be set for? I saw a comment about the IAC, if I clean it out, will that help?

[12Ounce]

Originally Posted by Searles Lewis

..............
We have been adding STP Carb cleaner, it works really well.......

With the injectors-is this something I can do at home? I have a Haynes manual, and have been using STP Carb. ......... Are they totally clogged? Could I run 3 bottles thru on engine at once, have it burn it off?........

What is an injector? Simply put: It is a electric-actuated, spring-returned fluid valve. The high pressure gasoline is supplied by the in-tank electric pump to the injectors. Mostly, the injector internal parts are highly machined metal components. The outlet of the injector is shaped to deliver a cone-shaped spray of gasoline when the injector is opened.

In Windstars, there are three filters in the fuel stream. One inlet screen on the pump. One in-line filter underneath the car. And each injector has a super fine-mesh screen built into its inlet. Adding cleaners to gasoline does some good (UP TO A POINT! .... DON'T OVERUSE!) Unfornately, it also attempts to break up whatever in caught in the three different filters and pass it on .... not good! In particular, the inlet filters on the injectors are "last chance" filters ... designed to protect the injectors.

That's why it is good to remove the injectors and give the inlet of the injectors a "sideways" blast of aerosol brake cleaner. This blast of cleaner will lift crud out of the inlet screen ... not try to drive the crud into the injector internals. A bit of work ... but not rocket-science!

[MARZBX157]

The idle on the Windstar is not adjustable from what I remember and is controlled by the ECU through the IAC, so maybe you need to clean or replace the IAC unit which controls the idle. Also, be careful using those 4-prong spark plugs like Bosch as they are not good on the Windstar. You should replace the bad ones with Autolite Double Platinum ones. If there was a lot of Prestone in the fuel line, then the filter sock on the pump could be clogged which is in the tank.
Question: If Antifreeze was present in the fuel, wouldn't that cause steam to come out the muffler?

[Searles Lewis]

Originally Posted by MARZBX157

The idle on the Windstar is not adjustable from what I remember and is controlled by the ECU through the IAC, so maybe you need to clean or replace the IAC unit which controls the idle. Also, be careful using those 4-prong spark plugs like Bosch as they are not good on the Windstar. You should replace the bad ones with Autolite Double Platinum ones. If there was a lot of Prestone in the fuel line, then the filter sock on the pump could be clogged which is in the tank.
Question: If Antifreeze was present in the fuel, wouldn't that cause steam to come out the muffler?

We used to have a Plymouth Voyager, which I now suspect was killed the same way by our landlord.

When the head gasket went, it did that. On the Ford, this time, that night and right afterwards, the interior of the windows fogged up the same way, with a goo I could not clean off, was sticky and smelly. It smelled just as the head gasket problem had, but we never had white smoke, leading me to believe the landlord anti-freezed the gas tank. Antifreeze does not clear out of the engine as sugar does.

I did attempt the rear spark plugs, and was unaware of the air intakes, and here was no mention of how to do it, either. I figured out one just pops out, and it will be a snap tomorrow. After re-hooking up the battery, the car runs better, and the CEL lights stopped, it just needed to be reset.

It is still stalling when it slows down. Someone on this forum stated it coudl be fixed two ways, which one is best?:
1. Isolator bolt fix, as done here...
http://leckemby.net/windstar/windstar01.html

or,

2. IAC valve clean.

I have down the valve cover in the past, but suspect that is not the problem here, but rather the sound being made is the fuel injectors and spark lugs-it was cut in half, soundwise by replacing the front 3. Since the isolator and fuel rail are in the same process, figure I would do the plugs first.

[wiswind]

You may need to change the fuel filter again.
If it were my vehicle, I would try to drain as much gasoline out of the tank as possible and replace with a FULL tank of gasoline, which will greatly reduce the amount of possible contaminates in the fuel system.

To change the 3 rear plugs with as little disassembly as possible, drive the front wheels up on a ramp and get to the rear 3 plugs from under the vehicle....you can reach right up at get them from under the vehicle.
I remove only 1 plug at a time so as to avoid introducing any issue of plugging the wrong wire to the wrong plug.

If the vehicle is not wanting to start/run, a check of the fuel pressure at the fuel pressure test point, located at the center of the front fuel rail (line that connects to the 3 front fuel injectors) would be in order.
THIS will tell you if you are getting fuel to that point or not.
The test point looks like a tire air valve......
Of course, use care to avoid spraying fuel at that point.

I would also add a can of Berryman's B-12 Chemtool to a full tank of gasoline to further desolve any contaminates in the fuel system.

Check a new spark plug to see if they are crudding up again.

As mentioned, new motor oil to flush out any junk that got there.

Some have reported problems with the Multi-prong Bosch plugs, if they are working for you, then I would not worry, but just a note about a possible cause for misfires.
It may be more of an issue now, with junk in the fuel, but only an inspection can tell.

[Searles Lewis]

Originally Posted by wiswind

You may need to change the fuel filter again.
If it were my vehicle, I would try to drain as much gasoline out of the tank as possible and replace with a FULL tank of gasoline, which will greatly reduce the amount of possible contaminates in the fuel system.

To change the 3 rear plugs with as little disassembly as possible, drive the front wheels up on a ramp and get to the rear 3 plugs from under the vehicle....you can reach right up at get them from under the vehicle.
I remove only 1 plug at a time so as to avoid introducing any issue of plugging the wrong wire to the wrong plug.

If the vehicle is not wanting to start/run, a check of the fuel pressure at the fuel pressure test point, located at the center of the front fuel rail (line that connects to the 3 front fuel injectors) would be in order.
THIS will tell you if you are getting fuel to that point or not.
The test point looks like a tire air valve......
Of course, use care to avoid spraying fuel at that point.

I would also add a can of Berryman's B-12 Chemtool to a full tank of gasoline to further desolve any contaminates in the fuel system.

Check a new spark plug to see if they are crudding up again.

As mentioned, new motor oil to flush out any junk that got there.

Some have reported problems with the Multi-prong Bosch plugs, if they are working for you, then I would not worry, but just a note about a possible cause for misfires.
It may be more of an issue now, with junk in the fuel, but only an inspection can tell.

Berryman's plus Sea foam seem to have mostly fixed it. It gags maybe once per drive, an is making hardly any noise at all. Thank you 4 this suggestion!