I laid my bike down in traffic the other day (embarrassing) and took pretty substantial damage to the left side and handle bars. I've managed to fix everything other than the dent and missing paint on the gas tank. I know I can't do the paint on my own as I can hardly color inside the lines in my nieces coloring book (I don't really do that), but I'm looking for some help on this dent.

I've had two different solutions suggested, both by engineers, and neither by someone who's tried it. The first is to fill the dent in with bondo, sand it down, and repaint it, which seems easy enough but also requires immediate repainting and I hate spending money. The second is to drain the tank, remove it, fill it with water, and freeze it; the idea being that the expansion of the frozen water (which some people call ice) will push the dent out.

My question to everyone here, which is a better option? Second question, is the guy with the ice idea batsh@t crazy or is this legit?

Thanks

 

I heard rubbing dry ice on it

 

The ice idea would have me worried about getting all that water out so not to get any in the engine. I had a similar accident wear the right side of my tank was hit REALLY hard with my bars. My painter had me tank the fuel pump out and he just reached in the there with a pry bar of some sort and popped it back into place the best he could then had to use alil bondo but not nearly as much..

 

This works....sometimes...but what you need to do is get most of the gas out of it. Then take a blow dryer and get the dent nice and warm (about a minute) the take a can of compressed air (Keyboard cleaner) turn it upside down and spray all over the dent. As it warms again it MIGHT pop right out. I have had it work on my truck just fine.

 

find a good painless dent remover in your neighborhood and show it to him.The combo of some of his tools and his glue tips on the out side might get it where its tolerabkle until you decide to redo it.Also there are some tank skins available pre painted (I hate them personally myself though)