water in the tank is fine, just keep filling the tank with petrol to reduce any harmful effects. if a bit of water got into the tank theres nothing to worry about as all that matters is that the octane and knock index of the new mixed fluids are combustible with a spark plug and within engine operating specs. Water is actually a byproduct of combustion so its like having a bit of exhaust back into the engine which is what some car systems do to get rid of toxic gases and retard engine power when needed.

You'd be surprised on what you can make your engine run on, and can be modified with little effort to combust hydrogen gas. Maintenance is the most important thing.

they are different, but you can have many different liquids and even petrol itself doesnt matter if ron 95, 97 or higher all have impurities. Its how much impurity the fuel injectors can tolerate and how much out of spec it is. The engine will happily burn anything that goes in but if its purely water, then you would not get any power from it and water vapour will come out your exhaust.

While fuel injectors are sensitive, water with its impurities is smaller than RON 95 which is a big chain of carbon and hydrogen, and possibly some other atoms in the large molecule as well. The space between one molecule to another is so big compared to space between atoms of a molecule, that using bigger molecules provides more power density and the same is true with rockets, hydrogen and oxygen are a basic rocket fuel, what is used normally is so dangerous that it is more potent than explosives. so tap water which has h20 and a bunch of impurities like metal and nitrogen based stuff is far smaller than a RON 95 petrol molecule that it would burn through the engine without issue as long as the engine is able to at least burn something that produces power (water wont but some fuel in each cylinder will), so a bit of water is harmless. That does not mean you should always put a bit of water in the tank as doing so will just reduce your engine power and efficiency and if not enough can be produced to keep the engine running (too much water), then thats basically flooded and would require the tank and engine to be pumped.

What I'm saying is that the internal combustion engine will run on anything that combust. Water won't combust and as long as sufficient fuel gets into the cylinder it'd be fine. As I said, Ron 95 is larger than water, won't clog or damage injector and too much will just flood the engine. Clearing out the engine is easy, replacing injectors is a killing, so water is fine but not anything bigger than what they were designed to handle or chemically bad like something corrosive. Also as long as the fuel doesn't pre ignite. So your car is safe if its just water, not diesel in a petrol

This post has been edited by System Error Message: Dec 10 2018, 03:41 PM

its basically just a pump, it'll compress anything that comes in and if it doesnt burn and provide energy right, the engine will stall. However engines can actually run on many things that will burn, and yes you can run your car on jet fuel but only if you modify your engine to do so but the main engine block with pistons will still be there.

So what im saying its not your engine you gotta worry about but your fuel injectors. Water is smaller so its fine, as long as theres enough fuel that goes into the compression to stop the engine from stalling you're fine, if not you'll have to do a flush/pump.

only if the there is no proper computer control to do all that, depends on the car. For many years already manufacturers have been designing their engines to run on far more things and fuel is not exactly pure. What im saying is that water in the tank is not as serious as it sounds, but trying to run the engine on only water could require even an oil flush aside from pumping all the water out of the tank and e ngine. To give an example on a less modern car, top gear once left a toyota exposed to sea for a while then got it back to life, but the engineer on site had to open the engine, pump all the water out, put it back and it got working, he did not have to replace a single part. In the OP's case, a bucket of water came his way to the fuel tank, but it was already full/overflowing so the amount of water to fuel would be so little that it would not matter but he could end up making maybe 1-2 hp less for a while till the water clears out, because when thet air and fuel is compressed, its not like as if the air going into the engine is 100% oxygen, its the same composition of air that we breathe and in malaysia with 80% humidity im sure a decent chunk of it is water. Its not the end of the world and for many cars engines are built better with computer controlled timings, ignition, sensors and much more.

If you look at the history of the development of piston based combustion engines, theres a lot to learn and catastrophic failures involving stuff blowing up happens on the extreme ends. For instance you cant run petrol very lean without risking your engine and thats a lot of air and air can be compressed. Water that cant be compressed can stall the engine while engines are also designed to brake by trying to uncompress a vacuum and even take in exhaust gases as part of its pollution control which would contain a lot more CO2, other gases and even more water. Water getting into the engine isnt as serious now as it used to be unless you drive a french/italian car as they only design their car to work in their country and not the rest of the world (like malaysia which is very humid and tend to have a lot of problems because of that). Its just very important to note that if your engine stalls because of water not to try and start it and do a flush.

In dry countries, the service interval is twice as long compared to malaysia, the high humidity and heat gets a lot of water and dirt that both the oil and filters need to be replaced more often, so even in good conditions dirt gets into the engine too. Im just saying that for any decent manufacturer, they would've taken impurities into account (including the horrible sand and dirt that can scratch your engine inside) and it would be fine, so the OP has nothing to worry about and that if the engine stalls all of a sudden not to restart it and get it flushed.

This post has been edited by System Error Message: Dec 11 2018, 11:59 PM