So, my buddies 85 has been having carb and fuel delivery problems. Heard a bunch of stuff sloshing around in his gas tank. We decided to drop it expecting to see a bunch of crud and rust inside to clean out.

What we saw was a bunch of white flaky looking stuff, some of it crushed up into a powder. All at the bottom of his tank. There looked to be grains of white stuff on his sending unit. Looked like sugar, so I decided to taste a little....lol. It tasted exactly like what you'd think sugar soaked in gas would taste like. I know...it's ok I've gotten plenty of coolant, oil, Brake cleaner in my face and mouth in my life.

But I'm trying to find out what actually happens to sugar when it's put in a gas tank.

 

A car came into my shop about a year ago. They caught their ex pouring sugar into her gas tank. They towed it to us, luckily the sugar solidified in the filler neck before making it to the tank.

And yes the culprit paid the bill

 

Ill have too keep that in mind when I tell the next one to pack her stuff!

 

Sugar has very harmful and disastrous effect on the combustion parts of the engine. Since it has low melting point, it turns down to plastic like material during the combustion process and jams the valve stems and the piston rings.
If it happens, do the following:
- Flush the fuel tank, primary fuel gauze in the fuel tank, fuel lines and carburetor with warm water and again flush it with gasoline. Note: Flush the fuel injectors with injector cleaner.
- Replace the fuel filter.

 

Oh man! That sucks! And makes me glad I have a locking gas cap with a key! It's annoying if you are in a hurry to get somewhere and need to fill up, but a few years ago gas got up to over $4 a gallon and there were some issues with people siphoning gas from vehicles. I bought that cap as soon as I heard about that. The piece of mind is worth the occasional nuisance.

A quick Google search brings up numerous caps, I got mine from JC Whitney.