If your bikes fuel-tank doesn't leak and you're scratched the paintwork, just carry on riding. If the fuel-tank has more damage, especially on a chromed tank, including dent removal, re-plating and painting, think about serious amounts of money. Fortunately, there are plenty of options in between for refurbishment your fuel-tank.
Simple Dented Fuel-Tank
Simple dents can often be hammered out by a skillful metalworker – if you're lucky, without even cutting a section out of the base. If you try ti yourself, remember that welding or brazing a section back in place can distort the fuel-tank, and welds can leak. Startlingly, even long-unused tanks can ignite momentarily as the petrol varnish inside is reactivated by heat. Part-filling with water during welding is a precaustion, but leave the cap off or the resulting steam can burst the whole thing open.
Complex Crunched Fuel-Tank
Complex crunches are impossible to get perfectly smooth again, though you might be able to get them acceptable. The professional solution is to get the surface as good as possible, then have it copper plated to a depth of upto 2mm. This gives a skilled operator enough leeway to polish out the imperfections without making the fuel-tank itself too thin. From then on it's the usual nickel followed by chrome plating for a perfect finish.
New Chrome and Paint for your Fuel-Tank
Re-chroming is only as good as the surface preparation. This means cleaning, de-chroming, polishing, nickel plating and final chrome plating, so it's never cheap; more then 10,000 Baht is not uncommon. If you're not sure of the paint color, you can get a match in tins or rattle spray cans from car paint shops behind the MBK shopping center. Even a flake of you old color will do.
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