The Chop Shop: Tank on FIRE

Well, theoretically, the above statement is true. After so many months of heartache and disappointment, one would only expect me to do such a deed to my bike. Right? I mean, more then once I was THIS close to giving it a petrol bath and lighting a match in an empty place near my house.

However, with the process going well, not so smooth (even peanut butter has a chunky side), things have been better. Now, I don't think I wrote exactly what happened, but in the process, some lazy ass decided not to bother with my ideas and said that the fuel cork on the original location of my already tilted and RAISED tank would not cause my tank to waste gas. Well, OBVIOUSLY IT DOES. However I didn't know that till much later on so the tank was painted, negative decals stuck on, sprayed over and taken off.

Since the swingarm is ready, this "little" flaw I saw in the tank was driving me up the wall and I HAD to fix it. In fact, there was another thing about relocating the fuel cap too but I wont do that as of yet (I'm broke). Well, other then just doing shit with bikes, I was (I think I mentioned it before) very much into cars and street racing. Hence I got to know a lot of people and also was somehow introduced to this guy who is now my official car club mechanic. Now, "what does a car dude have any place to be in a bike world?" one may ask, but not many realize that fabrication shops (aka engineering/cnc shops) know no such things as the difference between a cars ported block, nor a custom made bush for some funky wheels. To them, its just metal. A body panelist (aka panel beater) knows no difference to a front car fender to a fuel tank he needs to weld.

SO, my good friend The MadDriver of Maddriver's Garage had brought me today to see a friend of his who is a, erm… how do we put this… a "body reinforcement specialist" who does very well in making stiff bodies for cars etc, for what use, lets not go there… so we left it with the guy, told him what we needed to do and went on our way to eat lunch.

When we came back, I saw he was still welding, but to my amazement, he was not using a MIG weld or an ARC welder. He was torch welding!! With some funny gold colored bar. I later realized that he was torch welding my tank with copper. Its funny coz someone once told me that you cant weld metal to bronze. (then again, this moron told me my rear brake cant be mounted.. see pic). It was further explained to me that for fuel tanks, copper is best used and apparently flame welding is the weld of choice. I would presume as it would melt the thing and seal any gaps whereas a MIG, TIG or ARC would be a flash dry sorta thing.

So looking at him do my tank, I realized he scorched the paintjob. And to make things worse, he took a grinder with a steel brush and blended away the side of my tank!!! Upon me regaining my consciousness (I'm joking), he explained that there are potential leaks. He had generously helped us patch it up.

Leaving, I felt great satisfaction on looking at the work (yes its considered good, you just need to sand it down abit), I guess my MadDriver must have seen the heartache in my eyes about the paintjob so he had offered to help me out on that.