During the late 1950s, it is said that the French explorers Jacques Seguela and J.C. Baudot were making their way through the Atacama Desert in Chile while riding a Citroen 2CV. It was during this exploration that the car rattled to a stop. Upon inspection, it was found out that the vehicle had lost its engine oil. It was then that a passerby saw the duo stuck on the road, and proceeded to give them a bunch of bananas.
The two explorers were out of options and therefore ended up trying to use the bananas as a lubricant for the engine of their Citroen 2CV. It apparently worked according to a Dutch Citroën brochure from 1967, since both of them were able to cover another 180 miles without encountering any issue.
But does it really work? Can you really mash bananas and use them as an alternative to engine oil? Project Farm, a YouTube user, decided to conduct an experiment for finding answers to these questions. The YouTube user filled a lawnmower engine with bananas that had been liquified and observed how it ran for a duration of 30 minutes. The YouTube user even added water to the bananas in an attempt to maintain the viscosity that average motor oil has. However, the project didn’t go quite as well as the famed story of the Citroen 2CV.
Within five minutes, the banana-filled engine seized. The YouTube user was able to keep it running by adding water to it; the internals of the engine didn’t hold up quite well. The spark plug became engulfed with slime, while the cylinder walls had clear marks. The piston showed sign of enhanced wear. The compression of the engine was down by 25% as opposed to when the engine was running on engine oil.
So while the bananas in a Citroen 2CV might make for an awesome cool story; we would strongly recommend against trying to use bananas as an engine oil for your car since you will end up causing a lot of damage to your car.