1 K75 Gas Tank Fixup Thu Sep 10, 2020 1:13 am
jjefferies
Life time member
Background: My project bike, a '90 K75, is up and running. Minor issues that I'm working on. But the rattle-can spray job that I did on the tank while reasonably decent isn't quite as nice as I wished. So casting around for a solution, a friend showed me a tank he did by simply polishing the tank on a buffer. Now that looked very interesting. Several caveats, first I don't want to sacrifice my current tank in the process. First I thought to find/purchase a new tank. Greg doesn't have a proper one for this '90 bike, but thought that I might locate one for USD$100. So far no luck. Now I do have a tank off the parts bike he sold me but whoever rode it down obviously did a tank slapper. There are serious dings in the right rear of the tank and under the BMW logo on the right front. So my thought is to beat out the dings as best I can and then do the equivalent of "lead (ing)" of the dings and then grinding/sanding/polishing the filler metal down. And in the process polish out the rest of the tank's upper half. The filler metal I am thinking to use is the Durafix-Aluminium-Welding-Rods-Brazing-Easy-Soldering-Low-Temp things your find on ebay and the internet. The tank itself is sound and doesn't need to be repaired just leaded and polished. For anyone not quite sure what is meant by "leading", you take a torch, heat a piece of metal usually a external car part and apply the metal lead to it. After the lead metal semi-melts onto the car piece rather like bondo you grind and polish off the excess. Way back when, this was the preferred method of fixing dings in cars or bikes.
My question is has anyone else ever tried anything similar and is there a difference in color between aluminium and these brazing/filler rods? Really don't want to do the work only to learn there is no way you can make the different materials blend into one another in terms of color. Appreciate any useful suggestions or experiences.
Thanks
J.
My question is has anyone else ever tried anything similar and is there a difference in color between aluminium and these brazing/filler rods? Really don't want to do the work only to learn there is no way you can make the different materials blend into one another in terms of color. Appreciate any useful suggestions or experiences.
Thanks
J.