Personal story time: the first vehicle I purchased that required financing was a 1999 Chevrolet Blazer two-door back in 2002. At the time, I thought I was making a smart decision: a small SUV with a known-commodity V6 seemed like a great choice for a single guy who drove all over creation. The fuel economy had to be better than the 1979 Chrysler I was driving at the time, and surely it had to be more reliable than a late 1970s Mopar with Lean Burn, right? Wrong. I actually did not have the Blazer in my possession for the first two months of ownership. Instead, I was driving a Ford F-150 around that was on loan from the dealership because my Blazer’s fuel tank had been sugared and they were going to replace the entire fuel system. Hindsight being 20/20, I should’ve taken them up on their offer to try a different vehicle altogether…the Blazer was an absolutely craptastic pile of a vehicle, the Ultimate Driving Turd.
Dumping sugar in the gas tank is an old trope. It sounds easy enough: a bag of sugar and a funnel is all you need to kill off the vehicle of someone you can’t stand…right? Is it really that easy to screw with the head of someone you can’t stomach? The folks at Donut Media weren’t so sure, so they went ahead and performed a real-world test. Apparently, sugar made the TBI setup on this old Dakota smell like kettle corn. Um…okay…sure.
The whole story of sugar in the tank, then, may have come from when cars had their fuel tanks mounted in the cowl forward of the windshield. Model A era.
I had sugar dumped down my car’s fuel filler once. Don’t know who did it, but it came about the time someone didn’t get their way in a personal relationship. However it seems they didn’t bother to put the cap back on right thus drawing my attention before I ever started the car, and then hadn’t noticed that there was an unleaded-only neck-down and spring-loaded flapper valve that they would have needed to push in for any to make it past so none did. May all my enemies be that bright, they should have read some-sort of book or something first.
i would think dumping in alcohol would dissolve it and save flushing out the whole system.you know what really f’s it up? wood glue- gets right up to the motor and gums it up good.
Wonder if they would have driven the vehicle, would the results have been different? I’m thinking the undiluted singer would possibly have been picked up.