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by drone
5224 days ago
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Firstly, given that gas contains up to 10% ethanol now, no, your engine will be seriously damaged if you leave your car with gasoline in it for ten years and then start it without flushing it first. That's because the ethanol attracts water, and water does not compress as easily as gasoline, and the attempt to spray a high volume of water into your cylinder and then compress it will likely destroy something along the way. Agreed though that what passes for gasoline in that tank is anything but gasoline. Now, add further that all of the rubber hosing, if your car was built in the last two decades, will likely have dry-rot, and the vehicle is unlikely to run again without replacement on all of them. Should a rear main, or other important seal have been damaged, you'll be looking at around $1,000 in labor alone to disassemble the engine. How much was that car worth again? I've had lifters separate on me while driving taking out the engine block, radiator, and several other components along the way - the cost to replace with a -new- engine and radiator exceeded 40% of what I paid for the vehicle. (Don't be confused by the pricing on a used, junk-yard engine, and a new crate engine. Gets even worse with a V8 - have you seen the price on a 6.1L crate Hemi?) I still don't see what the big deal is - if I leave -any- electronic device with an li-ion battery in it discharged for a long period of time, that battery is toast. You think it's absurd that the battery in the car costs $40k? I'm sure mac laptop batteries would be even more expensive once you chained enough of them together to get to that level of sustained discharge capability. |
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If a car is left to sit for a year the gas will be bad, but there will likely be no further repair necessary other than flushing the fuel system. This is relatively cheap. Even if one mistakenly tries to start it and gets water in the engine, the repairs are far less costly than the $40,000 battery price tag on the tesla.
I had mentioned a decade specifically in regard to engine seizure -- you will not have this problem over a shorter time period such as one year. Nor will you have dry-rot of your hosing or any other major mechanical malfunction. Ruined gas and a dead battery are about the limits of damage in the one year period -- possibly a tire may go flat.
The big deal is that if I leave my $80k gasoline car in a garage for a year it will take very little to get it running again. Probably a few hundred bucks. Perhaps up to several thousand dollars if I foolishly try to start it and get very unlucky. But you can't reasonably construct a scenario where a garaged gasoline car is likely to sustain $40,000 in damages just from safely sitting out of the elements. It's just not possible, period.