Well...it happened. According to some neighbors of ours a few kids dumped sugar in the gas tank of my fiancee's 81 wagon. I managed to scrape out what was in the filler neck just under the cap. Not sure if any made it past the little flapper in the filler neck. Anyone have any experience with this? How hard would it be to pull a gas tank on a hilly city street?

Really...I'm not joking. Wish I was...

Thanks,
Greg

Here's what I did, in case anybody is interested...

1) Discovered drain plug on bottom of fuel tank. Positioned in an almost perfect location given that the car is parked on a hill. So maybe I'm not cursed after all...

2) Carefully wiped, chipped with a small screwdriver, and shop-vac'ed all of the residual sugar from the top of the filler neck.

3) Drained existing fuel into a sealed drain pan, and set aside for next local harzardous waste collection.

4) Went to gas station and bought 5 gallons of premium, 2 bottles of dry gas. Poured into fuel tank.

5) Smoked cigarette well away from the car and only after washing hands.

6) Again drained tank into another drain pan as per step 3. Jacked up car on side opposite the drain plug to be sure the tank was drained nearly dry.

7) Replaced tank drain plug. Next time I have some daylight I will again fill the car with some good fuel and check for leaks.

8) Bought and installed locking gas cap.

9) Drank celebratory beer.


I think (at least I hope) that I'm out of the woods here. I don't actually think that much sugar made it into the tank past the flapper in the filler neck. Reason being is I have heard that most of the neighborhood cars were hit that night. All seem to be doing fine. How much sugar could a couple of ten-year-olds possibly have had? I'm very thankful that neighbors informed me of this before I had a chance to start the car...

Thanks to everybody for your practical suggestions, good humor, and ideas for revenge. Right now I'm just going to sit here and breathe for a while...

Greg

I'm the conservative type. I would do everything to remove the sugar. Even if the fuel filter traps it, letting your fiancee drive a vehicle that could stall-out when the filter clogs in traffic is unsafe. I don't think there is a drain plug but I don't know the 81's. If not and you don't want to remove the tank you could drill or punch a hole in the lowest point of the tank or low point as determined by the angle of the vehicle on your hilly street, use a flat pan and catch all the fuel used for the flush. To plug the hole, use a threaded pan head screw and some gasoline-proof sealant. I did this long ago on a 1967 Olds Vista Cruiser wagon and the plugged hole never leaked.

same bad thing was done some years ago. the car was VW Santana with carburettor engine. the mechanical fuel pump was glogged by sugar. we also found caramelized sugar (lots of it) on the heater device in the intake manifold just below the carburettor. the car stopped because the float needle got stuck also by sugar. the car had fuel filter (this little one) before fuel pump. i recommend to empty fuel tank via filler neck, flush it and fill with good gasoline.
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i prefer non-german cars

We had an incident similar to your when a woman's neighbor poured a liter of pepsi coal into her 1989 244's tank. The car shut down when the stuff got to the injectors. I bypassed the fuel pump relay and pumped the gas tank out through the fuel hose at the manifold. Once clean gas was in, it ran like a champ. Sugar is Sugar so you may not have any lasting problems.

Regards,
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Will Dallas, www.willdallas.us, www.willdallas.org, www.willdallas.com 86 245 DL 205K miles, 93 940 250K miles, 88 765 GLE 149K miles, 86 244 DL 200K Miles

Now that might be more effective, because the sugar would have a good litre of water to disolve in, keeping it in syrup form. Adding a litre of water would probably be a problem as well, I had to flush a whole tank in my 245 that had got water in it.
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Drive it like you hate it

Karo Corn syrup is the best in the petrol. I read that somewhere...


Regards,
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Will Dallas, www.willdallas.us, www.willdallas.org, www.willdallas.com 86 245 DL 205K miles, 93 940 250K miles, 88 765 GLE 149K miles, 86 244 DL 200K Miles

Sugar, as we've just been informed, does not disolve in petrol. It does however disolve in hot water, which a radiator is full of. Just a thought.
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Drive it like you hate it

But the evildoer who has time to spend under your hood might not be satisfied with clogging the rad.

Clogging the radiator is one thing, but gumming up the coolant passages in the block and head would require a teardown if it worked.
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Drive it like you hate it

my solution...a Mossberg 12 guage pump gun will discourage further sweetening...as will a rotweiler or pittbull...once again I hate people...what a bunch of shitheads...sorry to hear about your incident.

I like this solution illbird :-)
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1975 Volvo 164E (my favorite), 1981 262C Bertone (in progress), 1976 264DL w/ B21 engine, 1970 Olds Toronado GT (99% complete - 455 V8), my daily driver: 2006 Audi A8L

"once again I hate people"
Hate to break this to you, but some of the posters on this board are people. Anyhow, you don't have to hate people to shoot at them.
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1980 245 Canadian B21A with SU carb and M46 trans in Brampton, Ont.

"Anyhow, you don't have to hate people to shoot at them."

Thanks, Trev...I needed a good laugh right about now!

I remember learning a couple life lessons in Brampton, early 70's. One was don't pass a crosswalk if a sidewalk pedestrian even glances toward it. The other was pass your pack of cigarettes around before withdrawing one for yourself. Part of getting along with people.

Cool. Are you British, then? What is the range of this practice of passing the smokes around? Sure wasn't typical in midwestern U.S. But in the U.K. I started smoking again when I kept being offered smoke by friendly (and polite) people. Tough habit.

Keep sugar out of the gas tank, and smoke out of your lungs? ;-)
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Gregg Shadduck, Mpls, MN -- 2x '87 745; '92 245; '67 Amazon

In Australia you probably wouldn't light up while speaking to someone without offering them one. I once got into a taxi with a coleague who had a cigarette in his hand (taxis are supposedly smoke free) and was informed by the driver "you can only smoke if I get one".
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Drive it like you hate it

Have to agree with the bird, people are so flawed. Material things are where it is at, as the phrase goes. Dogs are really cool to.

Urban legend. Sugar is insoluble in gasoline and therefore merely falls to the bottom of the tank. Granules may be picked up by the prepump and make it into the fuel system but will be stopped dead by the filter. You will likely go through fuel filters more quickly but no harm will come to the engine or pumps.

Depending on how much sugar is in the tank, you can ignore it or remove the tank to wash it out. One tip is valid, though: to keep the sugar in granule form, fill the car with ethanol blend gasoline to soak up any residual water in the bottom of the tank.
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See the 700/900 FAQ under 'Select Link' button on the top right.

OK sugar may require a polar solvent, but isn't that half the game being played with MTBE and methanol additives? I ought to see how much sugar can be dissolved in an ounce of Iowa road fuel.

Good point, about modified fuels. Ethanol should make sugar sweeter to the gas tank. ;-)

Here in colder-north-of-Iowa, we get 10% EtOH in the gas all year.
And the proud governor has just bought a piggy Suburban that runs on E85, 85% ethanol. As a sign or deep comitment.

Seems like politicians really can't get the feel of energy balance calculations (ethanol seems to be about a wash, overall?), while the type who do energy balance calculations (inputs, outputs...) don't much get the feel for politics. The ying and yang of personality types. :-)
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Gregg Shadduck, Mpls, MN -- 2x '87 745; '92 245; '67 Amazon

There is more information about this urban legend at http://www.snopes.com/autos/grace/sugar.asp.

Don't we have drain plugs in the bottom of our tanks? I haven't had occasion to check on my 240, but my 1800 does. Seeing as sugar is not harmful (news to me!), I'd just drain it and flush it without removing it.

-EdM.
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'90 240DL Wagon 'Lola' -- '72 1800ES 'Galadriel'

Myth Busters on the Discovery Channel covered this one, it proved to be false. Dan

No doubt on that one...should have done a long time ago!

Like john trevolta said in pulp fiction..."you just don't mess with another man's automobile"...."although it woulda almost been worth it had I been able to catch him doin it"....I truly empathize...as you may recall from my posts earlier this summer...someone did a hit and run on my newly restored 68 firebird 400...(11 days after final assembly)...and in case you were wondering...it was parked...so there was no steve mcqueen-esque chase following the incident....
If you find out who it was...may god have mercy on thier souls....Revenge is a dish best served cold....

While sugar may not be as bad as most people think it is can tell you from experience that a 2 liter bottle of soda pop will shut you down right now. It will require boil the tank out or replacing it to get all of the pop out. The problem with the pop is that it is heavier than the fuel it is poured into so it goes right to the bottom of the tank and sits in the little basket that the pre-pump draws from. I watched a tech replace both pumps, the filter, and install an entire used rail with injectors only to have it boomerang and bite him in the ass. When you looked into the tank you could plainly see the pop sitting in the bucket in big clumps. All this was brought to you by a disgruntled ex-husband and then he got back together with his wife and ended up having to pay for all of the repairs, talk about bitting you in the ass!