The mad scientists over at the Garage 54 YouTube channel are at it again. They love answering the automotive questions you didn’t know you wanted to ask. The garage’s latest video seeks an answer to that age old question: Can those adhesives we call super glue seize an engine?
Honestly, it’s not a thing I’ve ever considered. In my experience, super glue is not that super; it just barely does the job it’s advertised to do, let alone being able to kill an engine. But Garage 54 gave it the old Russian try:
Garage 54’s host, Vlad, first tried squeezing a couple of tubes of glue in each cylinder, then firing up the old Lada. That resulted in a foul-smelling exhaust. Undeterred, he then added a whole five tubes per cylinder and let it sit for a day. Surprisingly, not only did the car not start, but the engine was so seized up there was no movement at all. The team proceeded to drag the car around the lot and not even numerous clutch drops with weight on the drive tires got the engine to spin.
Using a handy endoscope the Garage 54 team was able to see they essentially created an entire thick layer of super glue in each cylinder.
The crew’s attempts to free up the engine were even more impressive than the initial seizing. While struggling to overcome the glue they broke the crankshaft. Not even a torch could free the engine. In the end, they had to tear down the engine and hammer out the pistons. If there was any oil on the cylinder walls it was no match for the super glue as the glue seeped past the piston rings.
So, I suppose if you’re really looking for a reason to seize an engine, a small truckload of super glue will apparently do the trick.