tank dent

When I bought my bike there was a dent in the side. The guy I bought it from said I could plug the holes & pressurize the tank forcing the dent out. I'm skeptical & don't want to have to find a new tank for this bike, have it painted etc.... Has anyone heard of or tried this?

Please DONT do this.. your most likely gonna bulge the tank befor removing the dent. Best to take it to a body with the petcocks and such removed and let them pull it out with their gear. They will use a stud welder to snatch the dent out and then its just smooth off the weld spot and prime and paint.

When I got a used tank for my GPZ it had a few dents. A friend of mine does PDR (paintless dent repair) on cars with hail and door ding damage. He offered to try and push the dents out with his PDR tools. After a couple of hours he had the tank dents pushed out to where all it needed was a thin coat of bondo (less than 1/8 inch). Call around and ask some PDR guys if they'll try working on it.

I had a dent from the prior owner hitting a pole.

I just sanded the paint down and filled the dent with bondo.

It needed about an eighth to a quarter cup of material to fill.

Ghetto? Oh well. Painted it looks great.

i heard filling with water and freezing would pop a dent, but that sounds hillibillyish and would probably crack the whole tank.

The PDR method that Stardon mentioned is your best bet. I've done this myself to numerous tanks on past bikes with PDR style tools that I've made myself. As long as you can get in the tank through the fuel cap hole or a sending unit cover, you can message out a dent with a curved implement with soft rag on the end, a wooden dowl or bat rounded out on the end, etc.
I'm not a body man, but I've had such good results that it was true PDR, with no filler or repaint needed.
Stephen

FYI under the "Won't hurt to try" category -- there are some past threads about using dry ice to remove dents.

The past threads are available by typing Dry Ice Dent Removal in the Search Forum box and clicking Go.

Good Luck!

not sure how big or deep the dent is, but the dry ice is used for light pressure dents, if its in a radius or a hard sharp dent , it will not work, the PDR idea seems the best.

Also, I stopped using Bondo, its more expenive, but a product called ALL METAL, it does not attract moisture so you will not get rust under the repair.

Just my $1.50 worth,, gas prices went up

I'm a hillbilly I guess. I heard that putting air in the tank would push out the dent, sounded good to me and I am full of hot air. I hooked up a compressed air source to my tank and tried to regulate the pressure to the tank.

The dent popped out:) and then when I let out the air the dent popped back in. Bummer.

I have just been riding with a dent.

aarons80kz650 wrote:

.. compressed air... dent popped out... let out the air the dent popped back in... riding with a dent.

?? Photo ???

I tried both the CO2 method and the fill with water and freeze method and both failed. Water method had the added downside of creating rust in my tank.

Picked up one of those glue-on dent pullers and it worked pretty well. www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=94925

Not perfect but got the dent close enough that only a skim coat layer of bondo was necessary.

Patton, for clarification, the dent is a large area. I do have some small dings in the tank and they did not move. I didn't think to take pictures while I was attempting it.