Can you substitute bananas for engine oil?

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From the Grapes of Wrath, page 100:

(Al remarking on a used car he was inspecting)

“Stuck my finger in the differential an’ they wasn’t no sawdust. Opened the gear box an’ they wasn’t no sawdust.”

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Mmm. Friction-fried plantains!

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Reminds me of an Andy Griffith Show where Barney buys a lemon of a car from a sweet little old lady (Ellen Corby, i.e. Gramma Walton) who turns out to be the head of a gang of grifters.

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Woah, this is heavy.

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I use Tri-flow brand bicycle chain oil primarily because it smells like bananas. It’s delightful.

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Daylight come and me want to go home.

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Get some whiskey in the gas tank and you’re rolling bananas foster. Mmmmmmm.

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Banana W30 is the name of my new band.

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Who did you hear this from, an episode of the Andy Griffith Show? Seriously.

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Haha, that’s what I thought about too!

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I’m definitely not falling for the old banana in the tailpipe.

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It’s been 25 years since I took a graduate engineering class on tribology. But my first reaction was, yeah, sure, why not? As long as the viscosity is in the general ballpark, bananas will work just fine. Maybe not long term as the water boils off (or corrodes the heck out of the engine), but until then, no prob.

None of lubrication and bearing equations include anything about the source of the fluid. Just viscosity, density, velocity, geometry, and force. Sometimes flow rate for pumped bearings. Bananas, synthetic oil, molten metal, zit oil, whatever. If the viscosity will support the load, the bearing won’t crash and everything works honky dory.

( Tribology is the science and engineering of interacting surfaces in relative motion. It includes the study and application of the principles of friction, lubrication and wear.)

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I guess they should redo this test with bananas:

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I’ve heard of some incidents like that; one thing they seem to have in common is that they all happened 50+ years ago. It is sometimes said that one of the greatest but most underappreciated tech advances of the last century has been the development of extremely sophisticated and potent lubricants, like motor oil.

I wonder if bananas would compare more favorably with motor oil from 80 years ago (in motors from 80 years ago) than they do with modern versions.

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There’s a great series about life durring wartime in England and the things they used and did to get by. I was sure this was in play here. As Americans and Bananas would be (in the latter part of the war) available from the Americas.

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Oh, yes.

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“Argon is working hard to keep your money using new techniques to recycle crude oil from teenage faces!”

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This is the perfect opportunity for me to leave this for everyone’s enjoyment. A favorite movie of mine:

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Thank you, that was the first thing that popped into my head when I read the post.

My profound thoughts as I watched the clip:

  1. Everyone knows the peel is the most slippery part. Just look at the research done by the Marx Brothers, Three Stooges, Hanna-Barbera, et al.

  2. So, mashed bananas have a high thermal inertia. No wonder toasting a slice of banana bread has no effect on it.

  3. Did he just use a drill to start a balky lawn mower? Oh, I’m filing away that little tip for later…

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