Isopropyl Alcohol

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Gator

Gator

Mopar or No Car
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Has anyone ever done this before? A guy that I know is having problems with water in his gas tank and he said that he put a couple of 1 pint bottles of 70% by volume Isopropyl rubbing alcohol in his gas tank in hopes to eliminate the water. I know dry gas has some amount of Isopropyl in it but I dont think I would do what he did. Well to this day and it has been about 2 weeks and 1 1/2 tanks of fuel later he still claims to have water in his tank. Just thought I'd ask if anyone has ever did this and if so does it work...Well anyways he said his exhaust does smell good, sort of like cam 2....
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The alcohol will absorb the water and blend with the gas. That's what Heat and Iso-Heat do. Iso-Heat should be a higher concentration of alcohol than the rubbing alcohol. The stuff he threw in is 70% alcohol, and 30% mostly water. There are also some additives to the rubbing alcohol that will give someone horrendous diarrhea if they drink it. They assume that if someone does it once, they won't do it again.

Have your friend try Iso-Heat. The rubbing alcohol he added may have already absorbed close to its limit of water, and can't help him out.
 
Jonah Hex said:
Can`t say that I have ever heard of that. If he has that much water in his tank, why doesn`t he just drain it?
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I've tried to tell him to let the tank get pretty close to empty and siphon whats left out. He's a stubborn person and thinks that adding this would get it all out. Well it looks like his thought failed him again....
 
Gator said:
I've tried to tell him to let the tank get pretty close to empty and siphon whats left out. He's a stubborn person and thinks that adding this would get it all out. Well it looks like his thought failed him again....
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One other concern that may persuade your friend to remove the tank to be sure all the water is out is, Iso propyl alcohol at some concentration will eat the neoprene fuel lines, fuel pump diaphragm and any orings in the system. What that concentration is I don't know but sometimes ya gotto scare people into doing the right thing.

Terry
 
I`ve heard of people using alcohol to remove water from tanks, I just didn`t know what type of alcohol. I restore antiques and do repairs on furniture. I use grain alcohol to remove those white rings on furniture caused by wet glasses that have penetrated the finish.
 
We used to use it on our log trucks in the winter when I lived in Pennsylvania. Never had a problem with my 445 Detroit or dads 500 CAT.
 
I've used it on my old f-100 before. worked fine. I used the 90% stuff that you get at the drug store tho. If he tryed it once & the problem still lingers, I would drain & flush the tank.

When I worked for the army railroad we did this quite often. Our old locomotives were 2 stroke, V16 diesels & they liked to blow oil out the stacks. About once a month, we dumped in 5 gal. of alcohol to every 2000 gal. of diesel. Burns super hot when mixed with diesel. Just hot enough to burn the oil out of the stack, but not hot enough to hurt a 9000 c.i. diesel engine.
16-567C.jpg

EMD 16-567C prime mover. (16 cylinders @ 567 C.I. each), 2 cycle, roots blower scavenged.
1900 gross hp,
good luck!
 
Try a quart of EverClear. 180 proof alcohol will remove the moisture.
Just don't hammer the throttle as it will tend to heat things up.
 
a friend of mine had water in the tank and used isopropyl and now he swears by the stuff. never had to use any myself but hey if it ever happened id be willing to give it a try.
 
I had to use it religiously in NY, especially in my tow vehicle............

We ALWAYS got condensation in the tanks, and it was hard to keep them topped off all the time........and once in a while the stinking gas station would give you a nice shot of water too..........

Isopropyl was the gold standard..........it was that, or moonshine........one or the other........and the other just wasn't available.
 
Ok guys thanks for the replys. Demondseed, BigMacDak and YellowDartDave, nice rides :thumbrig: Gotta love the Demon / Duster body style
 
Regular denatured alcohol will do better then isopropyl (which is about 30% water to begin with). Whatever you do, make sure you use ethanol NOT methanol. Methanol will corrode the zinc components and harden older non-viton rubber components in the fuel system. A gallon or two of E85 will pull the water out, and clean up any varnish pretty well.

Adding alcohol will not increase combustion chamber temps. It can't. There is far less caloric energy in a gallon of alcohol than a gallon of gasoline. It simply has less heat in it, and burns far cooler. Most of your cheaper "octane boosters" are alcohol based, and work by lowering chamber temperatures.

Have you noticed now that we are forced to buy 10% ethanol gas in most parts of the country, water in gas is less of an issue?
 
Well he finally decided to siphon his tank and in doing so had all kinds of shyt come up thru the hose. He then decided to drop his tank and flush it out. His car is running a lot better...
 
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