"Paintless" Dent Repair - FAIL, for now

[BSA_54A10]

There is no way you will be able to pull that dent out cold Richard.
The metal has creased and deformed
All you will achieve is to eventually rip a big hole in the tank when one of those nails rips the side out of the tank.
IT has to be done hot or dollied

[RichardL]

Trev,

Don’t blame you for not following the word-for-word tedium of my posts in this thread. As mentioned earlier, I’m using a wide oxy-acetylene flame, but going with a less sophisticated method than your heat shrinking approach, that is, “heat it and pull it.”

I think there is as much steel in this tank as all the body panels on a new car. I’m trying to picture what it took to make this dent. Maybe a hill climb where the rider came off and the bike came straight down on a rock, or something like that.



Richard L.

[trevinoz]

I wouldn't put braze near any tank, it will cause embrittlement and cracking.
The only way to do this job successfully is to open the bottoms and attack with dollies and hammers with a bit of filing.

[RichardL]

Thanks for the brazing advice. I will try to keep hole filling to welding. For now, I'm going to persevere with pulling on pins until or unless forced to open it. I haven't really checked it, but the proximity of the tunnel might preclude the kind of beating this brute deserves.

Richard L.

[Greybeard]

When I started to fettle my GF I found a dent in the tank that had been filled and painted. I made up a dolly* to get to the the dent through the filler hole. Using a flame and a light hammer I managed to reduce the dent to a rippled area. Luckily the damage was within the painted area of the tank. When I took the tank to the chromer's I knew the whole tank would be heavy copper plated to fill rust damage and polished before chroming but I asked them to concentrate on polishing the sides. The painter I took the tank to used etching primer on the tanks painted parts and filled the rippled area. When the tank was done you could not tell where the dent had been.

*If I still have it I'll show it to you.