If you have seen some of his experiments you know what I am talking about.
I just found a mower with a Briggs Quantum engine. It ran bad. Taking a wiff of the tank, I noticed the owner used paint thinner as gas.
Dumped it and added gas and it runs fine.
During the energy crisis back in the 70's petrol was abolished an replaced with "fuel"
Fuel is a mix of volatile hydrocarbons one of which is toluene
Toluene is the main solvent in paint thinners and has a boiling point around 110 C
Benzene ( which is real petrol ) has a boiling point around 80 C
So when left sitting around, the benzene will evaporate faster than the toluene thus the fuel starts to smell like paint stripper .
Paint stripper is basically caustic soda dissolved in toluene
