chemical engine sabotage

[Polverone]

From discussion on sci.chem within the last few months, I've come to believe that sugar in the fuel tank of a vehicle isn't a great way to disable it. Sugar doesn't dissolve in hydrocarbons and modern gas tanks don't accumulate very much water to help the sugar along.

What other substances, soluble in fuels, might serve to render a vehicle inoperative through clogging or corrosion of engine internals? One that came to mind as a possibility is p-toluenesulfonic acid, which is easily prepared, soluble in non-polar liquids, and chars into a nice mess when heated. Another possibility that came to mind is halogenated chemicals like DCM, chloroform, p-dichlorobenzene, or trichloroethylene. I can imagine chlorine or hydrogen chloride forming inside cylinders during the course of combustion and corroding them. However, I don't know if or at what concentrations this would be effective.

Thoughts? (What section does this question belong in, anyway?)

Oh, and a big pat on the back to whoever invigorated the forum search engine. It's definitely faster than I remember!

[nbk2000]

Having worked as a mechanic for a while, and having plenty of engines to experiment on, we tried this out using sugar.

It only worked by mechanical blockage of the fuel line filter. If we removed the filter and feed the tainted fuel in directly, then you got a nice bit of carbon soot coming out of the exhaust, but nothing more. The carbon simply burns.

I know there are gellants used in the petrochemical industry for spill cleanup that would turn a tank of fuel into a giant can of Jell-O, but I have no idea of what it is.

Halon gas can smother an engine by impeding the combustion process. Surely there's a gas soluble liquid halon that could be used to do the same thing via the fuel, rather than the air.

A suspension of superfine aluminum would pass through the fuel filter and be burnt into aluminum oxide, which is extremely abrasive, and which would eventually scour the cylinder walls till the cylinder siezed up.

Also, the application the substance would be used for would decide what you'd have to use. Would this be for sabotaging an enemies car as some form of petty revenge? Sabotage against a POL dump used by an occupying army? As a means of vehicle disabling for a crime?

What time frame? Instantly, within minutes, or could it takes days/weeks?

BTW, how was your hiatus? ;)

[Polverone]

Ideally, the method would be as potent as possible, rendering the engine useless in minutes or hours with a low concentration of agent. That would have broad applicability to many situations. I like the aluminum idea, but I think it would be tough to find aluminum dust that fine. I was interested especially in easily-sourced or synthesized compounds. An organoaluminum compound might do a bugger of a job on the cylinders, but that's hardly easy to acquire or handle. Tetrafluoroethane dissolved in a nonpolar carrier of reasonable BP? Would that be any more effective than bromine or chlorine compounds? I shamefully know very little about high-temperature combustion of halogen compounds. Are there any more accessible NP-soluble substances that char or fuse horribly on ignition? Higher boranes aren't exactly accessible.

Hiatus wasn't great. Moving is a PITA under the best circumstances and these weren't the best. It's nice to have Internet at home again. Can't browse here at school now because I don't know how much of a busybody the admin is at my new institution.

[nbk2000]

I know the halons prevent engine combustion at 1% w/v with air, so I'd imagine that it'd take very little in the fuel to achieve the same effect. It would prevent the car from starting in the first place, rather than destroying the engine, which you may not wish to happen if you intend to be able to use the vehicle for your own purposes later.

I'd think highly chlorinated solvents like TCE or perchloroethylene would achieve the same effect, but at higher concentrations, since it's the halides (chlorine/bromine/iodine, in effective order) that's the combustion suppresant in Halons.

Maybe even simple halogens like MeI or MeBr would work, since toxicity is not a concern, only effectiveness.

I believe that nano-sized powders are now available commercially for use in hi-tech ceramics manufacture. And would not a liquid aluminum complex achieve the same effect once it was burnt? I remember a patent for making superfine aluminum powder by reacting an aluminum solution (non-pyrophoric) with something else, perhaps it could be done in situ in the gas tank?

There are other metals used in ceramics manufacturer that could be used since they also form hard oxide salts upon combustion.

You might have a hard time finding anything that's non-exotic that'll work, because it'll have to survive temperatures in the many hundreds of degrees, pressures in the hundreds of PSI (minimum), and a vigourous mechanical pounding.

The simpliest thing to do would be to clog the fuel filter. That wouldn't destroy the engine, but it's not easy to replace them without tools and knowing where they are. In some vehicles, you have to remove fan belts and all sorts of things to get to the damn things, so it's not something a person could do by the side of the road, which would be good if you're planning on snatching them up. :)

As an aside, while googling for "war gases", I ran across a copy of it on your site, and this on sciencemadness:

Also, I realize that my public hosting of some files may peeve certain parties. Whoever scanned The War Gases might be annoyed that I am sharing it with the world.

I'm the person who scanned it, and posted it to the net back in '00, but I'm not peeved at all. It's good to get the information out to the world via the 'net, where the jackboots can never get it back from. :p

All I ask for is that I get the credit for scanning it in on the page where it's hosted. ;)

Also, you may wish to read this thread:

http://www.roguesci.org/theforum/showthread.php?s=&postid=44137#post44137

for some interesting patent info on the production of phosphorus tri- and oxy- chloride which seems very doable, and is the most vexing part of the whole OPA precursor procurement problem.

[xyz]

I know that this is about chemical fuel additives, but a very effective way of stuffing up an engine is to open the car bonnet, use a socket wrench to unscrew one or more spark plugs, pour sand, ball bearings, or pieces of scrap metal into the holes that the spark plugs came out of, and then replace the spark plugs. Whatever you put in there is now inside the cylinders, ball bearings make a hell of a noise and dent the cylinder after a while, sand scratches the hell out of the cylinder, and scrap metal can do all sorts of nasty things depending on the size of it. A piece of thick steel bar that is long enough to stop the piston from moving should produce interesing results, a sharpened piece of titanium or tungsten bar would be even better.

If you are only looking to render the car inoperable, not cause the engine problems, then just disconnect the battery or fuel line.

These things all assume you have access to the vehicle though, if you are aiming to target a supply of fuel then you will need to use a chemical means of disabling the engine.

NBK, Was the engine that you tested the sugar on left running for any length of time? IIRC when the engine heats up, the sugar is supposed to form "toffee" on the engine parts because of the heat.

I have heard on a site about revenge that there is a commerial fuel additive that you can buy which is designed to make the engine heat up a lot to rid it of moisture, if you added 10 - 20 times the recommended amount then I'm sure the engine would run into problems.

What about an additive for the radiator coolant that stops the radiator from working?

[Rhadon]

You could mix polyethylene with just enough gasoline to dissolve it. That will give you a viscous liquid which is easier to dissolve in gasoline than polyethylene in solid form. Once this is done, it should work like the ordinary sugar, but I think that polyethylene does a better job.

I know there are gellants used in the petrochemical industry for spill cleanup that would turn a tank of fuel into a giant can of Jell-O, but I have no idea of what it is. I know that calcium acetate can do that to ethyl alcohol (60 g Ca(CH3COO)2 per 300 ml of ethyl alcohol IIRC) in a matter of seconds. I don't know what happens chemically, so I cannot say whether this can be applied to gasoline, but I suppose not. Alone for the reason that the 60 g of calcium acetate mentioned are to be dissolved in water prior to use, but again, I don't have a clue what happens and perhaps the water isn't necessary at all, yet that would surprise me. Additionally, the amount of calcium acetate required is rather high obviously.

Don't cars in the US have locks on the gas tank? Over here you won't find any vehicle without one (unless it's very old), so you'd first have to overcome this obstacle.

[vulture]

Another possibility is to find an emulgator that will allow water and gas to be homogenously mixed.

Squirt in emulgator, add water, done.

[Rhadon]

I should add something to my last post: I read that the calcium acetate / gasoline effect is due to the lower solubility of calcium acetate in ethyl alcohol than in water. It separates and is said to create a lattice which encloses the ethyl alcohol. I can hardly believe that this is the whole story, though.

The idea with the emulgator sounds fine, and adding an emulgator should allow you to apply the calcium acetate trick either.

[Anthony]

You could throw a load of very low octane fuel into their tank, the resulting detonation (aka "pinking") should destroy in short order - from seconds upwards depending on how highly stressed it is.

A solid bar in the bore that prevented the piston from completing its stroke would simply jam when someone attempted to start it, to cause real damage you need the car moving to provide enough force to bend the con rods - as happens when you run your car through deep water and it goes into the air intake. I don't think the starter motor could provide enough force to do the job.

As suggested you could drain the coolant or the oil, would be worth disconnecting any sensors, although some cars might refuse to start without a signal from the sensors.

Locking petrol caps aren't that common anymore, since most are recessed behind a locked flap now and the actual cap simply screws on/off. The flaps are made of plastic and so are the locking tabs so a screwdriver would open it in seconds.

[Rhadon]

Locking petrol caps aren't that common anymore, since most are recessed behind a locked flap now and the actual cap simply screws on/off. Yes, that's right. I don't own a car and therefore am not an authority in this respect :). The flap should be opened without damaging it because otherwise the owner could notice what was going on (in the worst case) and pump out the contaminated fuel.

[vulture]

Duh! About that mixing water with gas....

The fuel intake should be situated on the bottom of the tank....since water has a higher density than gas....no emulgator needed! :p

[kingspaz]

not really a chemical sabotage but you could reconnect the HT leads in the exactly wrong order :)

[Polverone]

Thanks for the various suggestions. I am still mostly interested in chemical means, as those don't even require access to the vehicle, just to its fuel. That's interesting about halo-compounds preventing combustion at a few percent conc. in the fuel. Promotion of knocking is also an interesting idea. Don't peroxides promote knocking? Our old friend acetone peroxide might work for that, in reasonably low concentrations.

NBK, you've been credited as the original scan-producer on the War Gases page. You'll see that PDF security only works against people who play by the rules, though ;). I had to strip out the restrictions so I could recompress the book.

[nbk2000]

Yes, the engine was left to run for several hours, and it didn't do a damn thing to the engine. To see why, sprinkle some sugar on a hotplate coil that's barely glowing red in the dark. The sugar instantly explodes with a yellow flame. You can do this with cups worth of sugar (when a kid, I've done that) and the coil is just as clean as when you started.

Would it be possible to make gasoline peroxide? If not, I'd imagine a quart of MEKP in the tank wouldn't do the engine much good.

Pour a gallon of sulphuric acid into the tank. Watch as gas tank springs a leak from acid eating through it and dissolving rubber tubing.

Doesn't pyridine form a complex with HF? I would think that it would release the HF in the cylinder when the pyridine was burnt. The high temp/pressure of the cylinder should disassociate the HF, make the fluorine very effective in corroding the parts.

BTW, in english it's "emulsifier", not "emulgator".

Thanks for the credit polverone. While the restrictions may have been removed, my mark is still there, despite the OCR and conversion. :p RTPB "Plan for Failure" in action! Also, that file was from '00, not '03. I've learned a few tricks in the meantime. ;)

[FrankRizzo]

Granulated sugar usually won't make it past the fuel injectors. OTOH, corn syrup :D will do the job quite nicely, and you won't have to worry about leaving spilled sugar next to the vehicle.

[Efraim_barkbit]

A guy in a swedish car program tested the sugar in gas see if it was true that it would wreck the engine.
And because sugar won´t dissolve in gas, they fed the engine directly from the sugar bag into the carburator. I think they used almost half a kg, at least a couple of hundred grams. Then they took the car for for a test run, and the car ran as well as before the "treatment".

So, the problem isn´t to get into the cylinders, it is that it simply won´t work, as been already stated by NBK.

[zeocrash]

this isn't an addative in the fuel, but it is related.
earlier on in the thread someone mentioned putting an abrasive in the fuel.
back during world war 2, SOE developed what they called "heavy grease". this grease was spread on the axles of train carrages. the grease itsself was a mixture of grease and carborundem powder. this caused the axles on the train carriages to sieze up. this had great effect towards Dday as the axis were unable to bring tanks up from the south of france as all their train carriages were broken.

this idea could be applied to a car, if you were to put some abrasive in the lubricating oil you would cause much more damage than putting it into the fuel tank. 2 abrasives that are worth a look are ceric oxide and sillicon carbide, both used in rock pollishing

[Tuatara]

Dishwashing detergent is an effective gelling agent for petrol. I used to mix it up a lot and use it as a hand cleaner. I'd imagine it would make a serious mess of a car's fuel lines.

[FrankRizzo]

Efraim_barkbit: That's not a very accurate way of testing.

What most likely happened was that the sugar granules, being very light, were just ejected whole with the exhaust gases and never really burned. Try throwing some sugar through a blowtorch flame to see that I mean. Most of the grains will fall through unscathed. Liquid sugars are much stickier, and would tend to stay in the cylinder through more than 1 stroke.

The red-hot coil experiment is slightly flawed in the fact that the sugar has more time in contact with a high temperature surface, and the carbon is able to receive enough energy to vaporize.

[zeocrash]

isn't acetone a suitable gelling agent for petrol. i seem to remember reading that it was used for gelling petrol in cordite. just out of interest, does anyine know the composition of cordite

[zaibatsu]

Either I've got something twisted, or cordite is an early "smokeless" propellant which means it's NC. Petrol in cordite?

[zeocrash]

i dont know
when searching goolge i found 2 defenitions, one said cordite was a mix of NC, NG and nitroglycerine.
the other said[n] explosive powder (nitroglycerin and guncotton and petrolatum) dissolved in acetone and dried and extruded in brown cords
i may be wrong about the acetone, but i was sure that focus magazine said people used to harvest conkers during WW1 to make acetone, which would gel the petrol to a jelly.
edit: google just brought up a link to a thread in the roguesci archives about napalm.
The best one was by far gasoline/acetone in a 50/50 ratio here (http://www.roguesci.org/archive/955_6-27.html)

[DBSP]

How about pouring MEKP into the gas tank, might be fun :).

[BrAiNFeVeR]

Yeah, I allways wondered what a few drops of NG would do in an engine ...

Would it dissolve in the gasoline ?


If it would enter the engine in a "droplet" state, I think you might get to see some engine parts flying around :p

Maybe some NG in a capsule that dissolves after some time, to ensure the engine is running nice and hot :D

[Rhadon]

does anyine know the composition of corditeCordite has several meanings:

(a) German: a smokeless powder being composed of 64% nitrocellulose, 31% nitroglycerin and 5% vaseline

(b) English: double base nitroglycerin-nitrocellulose-powder

Source: The lexicon of German explosives compositions (http://www.r-haas.de/v11.html) (German language)

[megalomania]

I observed an associate of mine place about 200 mL of dish soap into another individuals gas tank. The mix also included some sugar dissolved in water with the soap. This did indeed do the trick and the engine was damaged.

[nbk2000]

It wasn't the sugar, but the detergent, that did the damage, by emulsifying the oil that is needed to lubricate the engine. When water gets into the oil, that's it for the engine. :(

[vulture]

Does acetylene dissolve in gasoline? :D

Metal powders in the fuel would be interesting too. They'll raise the engine temperature above safe limits and will leave abrasive residue: Al2O3, MgO, Fe2O3,....

Very fine sulfur with some nitromethane comes into mind too. After being burned, the SO2 forms SO3 with the extra NOx produced by the nitromethane. Then there's the water of the gasoline combustion et voila, presto sulfuric acid.

I wonder what the effects of concentrated acetic acid in gasoline would be.
It'll probably burn up before it can do any damage.

[TheBicher]

In Kurt Saxon's video from the FTP he talks about using ANTI (Ammonium Nitrogen Tri-Iodine) in a small sealed canister like those from pill bottles to make a gas tank bomb. I'm not sure about the stability, and it could be a bit extreme, but supposedly will really fuck up an engine.

[kingspaz]

personly i think that sounds like a fucking stupid idea. if you're going to use explosives to fuck up the tank why not fill the tank with MEKP?

[Jakio]

As far as using an emulsifyer to allow water and gasoline to mix: such a mix will run just fine. Water will only damage an engine if a large slug of water is drawn in a particular intake cycle, causing a lean fuel/air mixture and probable engine death. I've personally played around with water injection in my car, and actually cleans the intake chamber very nicely.

My vote goes with diesel fuel in the tank. Cheap, passes through the filter, and will lower the collective octane rating of the mixture so low that the engine will melt a piston or blow a connecting rod. I like this one since it would be more difficult to trace than particulates and wouldn't cause immediate damage; the damage would occur over a period of several minuets, less if the throttle is used agressivly.

[Anthony]

I considered diesel, but didn't think it would lower the octane rating of the fuel. Afterall, a petrol engine typically runs at max of 9-9.5:1 compression ratio, whereas diesels run much higher 15-15:1 +, so didn't think that it would cause compression-ignition in petrol engine.

Obviously, I could be wrong :)

[Jakio]

Anthony: Diesel added to petrol will lower the octane rating considerably! Diesel has a rating of approx. 15-20.

As far as damage goes, compression ignition is not really the goal, but rather detonation is. Preignition, or 'pinging', is not healthy for an engine and occurs durning part throttle operations. Detonation, however, cracks engine blocks and connecting rods. Diesel essentially would make gasoline much more likely to detonate during higher load and higher engine speed operations.

Say a person would like to disable one particular VW golf that needs disabling. If this VW has a 10 gallon tank, then 2-3 gallons of diesel should be enough to cause permanent engine damage over a period of the tank.

[sauvin]

The original question, I believe, was "what would you put in the fuel?"

I'd always been led to believe that sugar in the gas tank is a Very Bad Idea because it gums up the cylinders. Mechanics I trust have told me they do a fairly brisk business in replacing or rebuiding engines treated in this manner. Sugar will not dissolve in either gasoline or diesel (which is the key to removing the sugar from the gasoline: extraction by water and subsequent distillation if you're ever stuck in the boonies) so getting the sugar to the engine almost necessarily means sugar dissolved in water.

I was personally thinking in terms of changing the octane rating of the fuel with something a bit more dramatically destructive than the action of acids or fine metallic particulate: surely there must be some explosive that would dissolve in ethanol, methanol or, if needs be, water, that would not detonate until exposed directly to spark after being atomised. AP, perhaps?

The damage done to a cylinder and adjacent structures by a piston suddenly no longer in a single piece, or with a shattered wrist pin, is something you'd have to see to really believe.

[Anthony]

As I understand it:

Detonation (pinking, pinging, knocking) is where the fuel is ignited by the spark plug, but rather than a progressive burn, it burns all at once, before the piston can reach TDC. The shockwave hitting the still-rising piston giving the characteristic sound. Apparently many engines have sensors that detect this and will retard ignition to stop it.

Pre-ignition: Where the fuel ignites from compression before the spark plug fires. I was under the impression that this cause more damage than detonation.

Thanks for correction on the octane rating of diesel!

[Jakio]

Anthony: detonation is what kills engines, preignition is nothing too serious. The problem comes when, under heavy load, preignition causes an abnormal combustion event like detonation and bends your connecting rods bend in half. Detonation usually occurs at lower rpms when the pistons are moving slower, allowing more time for the fuel/air mix to get ahead of itself generating a pressure spike.

Also, compression is not the cause of ignition, but rather the heat generated from compressing the fuel/air mixture. Most preignition is caused by carbon deposits in the combustion chamber that retain heat and trigger a pre-timed secondary flame front.

edit: I forgot to mention this: since engines are moving so fast, the normal ignition process takes place over most of the ignition stroke. If you could take a pressure reading of the cylinder, you would see the psi grow (in a well timed engine) over the course of the stroke almost to Bottom Dead Center. If, however, the fuel/air mix preignited a few degrees before top dead center during the compression stroke, the pressure will only rise slightly to resist the piston's movement.

[bipolar]

I can't beleive no one has said this yet, but boiled linseed oil from the hardware store in the gas tank is supposed to work, it is in the special forces improvised munitions black book volume 3.

When the engine is started, the linseed oil will be carried, along with the gas, to the engine cylinders. The extreme heat generated in the cylinders will cause the linseed oil to break down into a sticky resin. After a period of time, this resin will completely stop the engine from running. The time delay period can be several hours or several days. Because of the time delay period, it is almost impossible to determine when or where the linseed oil was added to the gas tank, making detection virtually impossible

also a chemical gas tank incediary from the same book.:

i dont want to quote the entire thing but what you do is fill 2 gelcaps with metallic sodium and 2 with calcium carbide put in a small glass or plastic medicine vial and fill half full with water right before you put it in the gas tank and after 10 minutes it will ignite, which it says only really works best if the gas tank is less than full of fuel , so there is a good explosive fuel air ratio

when the water contacts the sodium , hydrogen is generated and the heat causes the hydrogen to ignite, when calcium carbide contacts water acetylene gas is generated so you get the picture

[CommonScientist]

This doesnt really go in the fuel tank, but I think it would work just as well.

If you can get acsess to the radiator cap, then your set. Drain all of the coolant/water from the engine, replace drain plug. Open up cap on radiator, and fill it up with gasoline. If I'm not mistaken, a cars engine can reach 400 degrees F in places, and since there is water jackets around the cylinders for cooling, then that temperature might be a bit higher. I assume that this temperature would be high enough for the gasoline to combust, possibly colapsing the cylinders, cracking the block in numerous places, and having the radiator and alll of the others in front of the engine be blown apart, not to mention the hood coming off. There also could be a risk of metal coming thorugh the firewall of the car.

Would this be a correct statement, or am I rambling again?

[atr]

What about a finely granulated liquid soluable oxidizer mixed into a gallon of nitromethane . Depending upon how full the tank is you may be able to turn the motor into a rocket engine , for a few seconds .

[CommonScientist]

I dont think that the engine could become a "rocket engine", as it doesnt use rocket principles. It would end up blowing the engine from overly increasing power.

AN+NM=HE- but as snesitve as a rock. The kid might be on the right track though, the AN would make the fuel burn hotter, because it would lean out, due to the fuel/air mixture going lean due to the oxidizer, then the NM adding even more kick to it. An average engine would come apart, and the piston could melt as well. Hell, disable the rev-limiter, put a stick on the petal, and watch her come apart.

[atr]

CommonScientist , just for the sake of clarification , the kid is slightly over half a century old . No chemistry background but the oxidizer/nitromethane idea came from watching a guy fire up a '68 Roadrunner with a 383 under the hood that he'd just added a nitrosoxide system to . He dumped the clutch and never made it out of first gear when the engine exploded . It'd be pretty hard to hook up an nos system covertly to someones car but it would be pretty easy to distill some 40% nitromethane from a hobby shop , ad an oxidizer and pour it in the tank . I guess the reaction would depend upon the mixture with a close to empty tank being a better target than a close to full one . I think that it may work with no worry about plugging up filters on the way . The Kid , :)

[Bugger]

It wasn't the sugar, but the detergent, that did the damage, by emulsifying the oil that is needed to lubricate the engine. When water gets into the oil, that's it for the engine. :(

On the other hand, pure detergent, without any water or sugar, would not have had the same effect. It would have emulsified the oil, but because it is also lubricating in nature in the absence of water, any damage would have been much less.

Bugger.

[CommonScientist]

Hey hey, no offense intended, looks like you got yourself a nick eh'? Yeah, if the piston speed went over its rating limit for the connecting rods, something is bound to fail.

See you around,"kid"

[teshilo]

In the book Incendiary weapon by SIPRI (on FTP) issue good article about use napalm as gelling agent for sabotage engine.

[kingspaz]

Many people seem to be forgeting its not as simple as 'adding an oxidiser' all common oxidisers are ionic, so not going to dissolve in a non-polar solvent such as petrol. Also, powdered things going into the petrol are likely to not do much more than clog the fuel filter and make the engine run lean.

[atr]

Hey hey, no offense intended, looks like you got yourself a nick eh'? Yeah, if the piston speed went over its rating limit for the connecting rods, something is bound to fail.

See you around,"kid"

Absolutely no offence taken . The Kid ;)

[warmage]

Well here is what this old hillbilly recomends....go down to your local NAPA store. Buy a 1/2 Lb bag or "Valve Grinding Compound"......(aluminum oxide)
About 240 grit is about right, dump the abrasive in the oil cap (located in the rocker cover). Put the cap back on.....walk away.
In about 3 or 4 days every ring,guide,bearing,seal,piston,cylinder,and surface in this engine will be HISTORY.

I've seen this happen by accident.....an old hillbilly "shiner"/"NACAR" trick was to do this to a brand new engine.....but only for about 3 or 4 hours and
then flush it out with a mix of kerosene and motor oil.
This "honed out" the engine and actually Increased the power from a new engine by about 10 to 15%. Sort of a super quick break in process. Just be damm good and sure to flush it out with the kero/oil mix.
One young dumbass i know of Forgot To.... he lunched a new 1700 dollar mill, and that was a hell of a lot of long green back in 1962!!!

Oh, BTW....high bead shine, (about 180 proof) makes a dandy hot rod fuel.
But stay away from adding hydrazene to your fuel!!!!!!!!.....it reacts with the nitromethane to form a class A explosive salt. Which is almost as touchy
as nitrogylcerin.....i seen a guy loose the front half of a rail job that way.

[CommonScientist]

Its called the valve cover, but I guess it could be called the rocker cover, as there are rockers in there.

Well, why not just open up both oil fill cpas, if there are 2 on the car, and pour in as much sand as you can. Then pull out the dipstick, put in a shitload of sand in there as well. Put sand in the tranny as well.

That is, if you couldnt get metal shavings, but if you go up to a machine shop, they have about a 55 gallon drum of metal shavings there a week, if they are busy, so just pour that in there.

Oh, thanks for telling us about the hrdrazine and NM, that could be handy, just pour them both in the tank. I do however, think that gas in the radiator would do some serious damage, I would love to test it out on an old ford or some shit car.

[markgollum]

Why not use metal stearates?
According to Federoff, Aluminum and magnesium stearate were used as fuel thickeners for flame throwers, therefore they are soluble in gasoline.
When the mix is added to the fuel tank of a vehicle it would increase the fuels viscosity, leaning out the motor (ofcourse, you wouldent want to add to much and turn the fuel tank into jelly)and causing it to overheat, this, compounded with the metal oxide forming in the cylinder, would probably destroy the motor :D :p .
I bet calcium stearate would also work.

[Crane]

On a similar note, I remember that styrafoam dissolves in gasoline as well, and was listed in the Jolly Rogers Cookbook (I believe?) as a means to gel gasoline. It apparently works fairly well, but requires large amounts of styrafoam compared to gasoline volume. It might be interesting to see what effect the addition of some gelled fuel would have... probably pretty messy.

[kingspaz]

DON'T EVER MAKE REFERENCE TO JOLLY COCK SUCKERS COOKBOOK!

Have you not read the rules? It does make an interesting long burning incendary, but if you'd done it you'd know that it doesn't gel the petrol. The petrol softens the styrofoam and the styrofoam sinks to the bottom of the container in a thick gloopy mass. The idea is that you keep putting styrofoam into the container until you have a thick petrol soaked gloop. It will do nothing more than block the fuel filter.
Well, I suppose its a bit late explaining this because you're banned :D

[recycler]

I like the idea of spoiling the oil filter. On most cars the oil filter is accessable without problems. If you simply use a screwdriver to poke some holes into the filter (not the casing) and add some sand, or some polishing media like chrome polishing paste this should over a certain time "polish" all moving parts in the engine. Maybe this compound can also be added to the gasoline in diluted form so it will pass the fuel filter. But adding this to the oil circuit will be more effective. Beware: Most cars will spill oil if the filter is removed.

I once tried to "clean" a model engine this way and within a very short time the abrasion of the polishing media spoiled the compression of the engine so it was worthless.

[WMD]

Here's what some friendly "been there, done that" kind of people have to say on the subject. It's a chapter from Ecodefense, one of the best sabotage manuals around. While they mainly bring up stuff that was already posted, it's nicely illustrated.
http://www.omnipresence.mahost.org/ch5txt.htm
Btw, I don't have a site ripper installed at the moment, but the whole book is still online, so if someone could make a zip out of it and put it on the ftp that would probably a very good idea. You'll never know when the war on certain kinds of terrorism gets down on them.

[alf]

This is OSS formula to break car engines.
Caccolube (turtle egg)
68 parts odçf aluminium-magnesium 50-50 alloy (al-mag powder)
6 parts cork dried and grinded
8 parts dry resin called amberol

15 grams needed to do the job. It was packed 30 grs in thin rubber sheath.

[croc]

Firat off i wouldnt mention the carpbook, that will get you a firm beatig around here, and secode of all i have tried many of the flame fuesl off the JRC but the only reason why lots of styrofoam is needed is because styrofoam is a foam and is made of mostly air.
styrofoam is made from the polomer polystyren which mostly exists in a foam form. it has a plastic recycle code of 6. i have seen the plastic code on other products but usualy plastic cups (not in foam form) are made pf polystyrne

[Anthony]

The valve grinding abrasive in the oil is a good idea. Like many suggestions though, it involves having access to the engine compartment. Most cars are alarmed in this area, but I don't know of any that have alarmed fuel fillers. Also, you can get to the fuel tank with a screwdriver, getting a hood/bonnet open would probably be harder. I think it can be done by punching a screwdriver through the bonnet skin near the release catch to manipulate it, but obviously this leaves visible damage. So targeting the fuel will probably be more practical.

I've always known it as the rocker cover. But it's probably not technically accurate since most engines run overhead cams nowadays, and thus have no rockers.

I think if people could easily get ahold of hydrazine, they'd be doing more interesting things with it that tipping it into someones fuel tank by the gallon!

Replacing the coolant with gasoline isn't going to do shit, except maybe start a fire in the engine compartment. Most engines don't run over 100*C, if they do they are over-heating. Auto-ignition temperature of gasoline is anywhere from 260 - 460*C.

If the engine block is full of gasoline, how would an explosion occur when there is no air? Even if an explosion did occur, it would be small due to the limited volume of the coolant pathways, and the few tens of psi created wouldn't touch an engine block.

What would likely happen is this: engine heats up and gasoline starts to boil and vapour pours from the radiator overfill tube which vents out the bottom of the engine compartment. Ignition of this vapour is possible, which would start an engine fire, but not very likely as there probably won't be a source of ignition. The exhaust manifold won't be hot enough, and if the vehicle is driving (likely), the vapour will be quickly dispersed. Leaks in the ignition system (if present) might allow spark ignition. But this would be occuring at the top of the engine, while the vapour is emerging below, and being rapidly blown away. If the car was running in a confined space (e.g. garage), then perhaps this might happen.

Most likely though, the gasoline will all boil away, the engine would then overheat and seize.

[kingspaz]

Many fords have a keylocked filler cap. And most cars I've seen with central locking also have a locking mechanism on the filler flap which will be linked to the cars alarm system. Bonnets are generally also linked to the cars alarm system, should it have one.

[nbk2000]

Random sabotage by putting the contaminant in the spout of a gasoline pump handle while the station is closed overnight comes to mind.

First person to use that nozzle ends up pumping death to their engine into their gas tank.

Use only in high rent neighborhoods, to punish the rich. ;)

[kingspaz]

That sounds like a plan. So long as the petrol station is a small country type, family owned sort of thing which is not going to have CCTV. Hm...a way to drain the cars battery rendering the alarm inoperative has just come to mind.

Most cars are of negative earth type. That means the negative terminal of the battery is connected straight to the bodywork of the car so only the positive feed is needed to most electrical components. Cars with engines located transversly across the front of the engine bay will have the alternator within reach from under the car, next to the right or left inner wing. I'm not sure how many cars have the alternator between the engine and the bulkhead but all I've seen have it between the engine and the front of the car. This is relatively easy to get to with a pair of wire snips. The positive feed wire could be snippd and then earthed to short circuit the car battery. The alarm would be killed and the bonnet/fuel filler could then be opened up. the wire could be simply bodged back on so the car will appear to run as normal while the deadly fuel mixture enters the engine. Or you could fill the engine oil with sand if you can reach the bonnet release cable from under the car :)

[akinrog]

The positive feed wire could be snippd and then earthed to short circuit the car battery.

I know it is unacceptable and uncommon for newbees to tell something agains another thing a mod said, but there is one thing I have to say about the shorting the alternator to the ground. So please accept my apologies.

During my childhood I was working in a automobile electrician shop, according to my memory/experience, when a lead is shorted to ground then the relevant hot wire gets exremely heated and if you do not disconnect it most probable thing you get is a fire! (Fire may be an option to disable the car of course, but too risky as you may be charged with arson.)

In addition when you short lead and ground, a great deal of sound is produced due to sparks produced (which is very bad during night operation).

As you may know the car battery has a good deal of power and high amp. If you short it, the most probable thing you may have fire. If you do it with your bare hands, your hands may be burned due to heating of the wire. However if you add a high current drawing appliance to the wire (an electric heater comes to my mind), you may get rid of fire.

[WMD]

Many fords have a keylocked filler cap. And most cars I've seen with central locking also have a locking mechanism on the filler flap which will be linked to the cars alarm system.

Normally the gas cap has a very cheap wafer lock, worse than the door or ignition. Easy to pick using either a suitable tension wrench and a double ball pick or jiggler keys. Also they're made mainly of plastic, so a 2mm hole is easily drilled and covered up, no problem introducing enough contaminant through that one. Since you're trying to sabotage it anyway it's no problem to drill some holes in the necessary places, maybe cover it with epoxy kit afterwards.

[kingspaz]

akinrog, you are quite right. Shorting is probably not the safest option. I have shorted car batteries before with some quite specacular effects. You are also quite right in suggesting the use of a high current drawing apliance. Something like that could be used to disable the car battery. An additional problem arises with advances alarms though. I believe some may have their own power source separate from the car battery. I'm not too sure about this but it would make sense to. The shitty car manufacturer built alarms are powered by the car battery though.

WMD, ford filler cap locks are indeed weak. It is possible to drill them off providing the way to open the lock is clockwise. I've used a thin drill-bit before to drill out the lock assebly, then forcefully turn the filler cap mechanism by allowing a large drill-bit to jam when it is inside. The force of the drill then spins the cap off.

Another thing comes to mind though. From under most cars it is easy enough to access the sump drain plug, allowing the engine oil to be drained. The engine would have trouble running like this without some replacement liquid in there but hopefully the person attempting to drive the car would keep opening up the throttle to keep the thing alive, scraping the inside to bits whilst on the way to work. Another possibility would be draining the cooling system which can also be accessed relatively easily. The car would run fine until it was up to operating temperature and it overheated...

Draining both would surely cause some damage or atleast render the car unuseable until the fluids were replaced.

[Nevermore]

What about a diesel car..
will it be harder to disable it?
:D

[James]

Nevermore: We already discussed sabotaging diesel (http://www.roguesci.org/theforum/showthread.php?t=3648) powerplants.

[kingspaz]

nevermore, I should think any engine running without oil or coolant would seize if the owner persisted in trying to keep the thing going.

[James]

I found these (http://radio.weblogs.com/0105910/2004/09/25.html) sites (http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/8/9/15/1) through Slashdot (http://Slashdot.org/). Adding sufficently small amounts of α-cyclodextrine (αCD)and 4-methylpyridine (4MP) should cause the cooling system to lock up.possibly ruining the water pump. After a period of time the coolant would return to its' liqud state.

[nbk2000]

Is not 4-methylpyridine a precursor for fentanyls? If so, it'd be an insane waste to use it for engine sabotage.

[WMD]

Nope, that's the pyridone you're talking about

[nbk2000]

Isn't pyridione made from pyridine?

[WMD]

You could probably do it that way but I think it's not very practical for home manufacture. Especially not with a methyl group in the 4 position.

[FUTI]

I'm a chemist and still think that best way to screw the things up is mechanical force.

For large sistems you could try something nasty as corosion or cloging, but for small targets that is a waste of time (if you are single anarchist of course). If you are just part of a big organised system that is more likely imaginable.

Today one friend told me how the sabotage got it's name... by the wooden shoe (sabo) the textile worker use in IXX century. If you hate the boss, throw it to the machine and its fine mechanical construction is all fu*ked up.:)

[meselfs]

I'll remember that :D