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Well I thought Russ and I were off to a flying start yesterday when we started Degsy's NESR race bike, the Shark Skins got here at 11:30 am on Wednesday. Russ started to wet sand the skins in order to get them ready to prime, I started in on the gas tank, Now Degsy had told me not to worry about the golf ball size dent, "Just fill with body putty don't worry about pulling it" Well I should have left well enough alone, But I looked at the dent and figured that for it to be right it should be pulled. I figured no big deal, I do after all have my special space age stud gun for welding pins to tanks to pull dents, I would just grind down the area, weld 4 or 5 pins and then pull the dent... Well it did not go as planned, I welded the pins and pulled the dent. I then preasure tested the tank for leaks. The smallest of pin hole leaks was found around one of the spots where I welded a pin, no big deal right?
Now we come to the problem. Dan forgot to send me the key for the gas cap... This is usualy not a problem, we just wait for the customer to mail it to us, but we couldn't do this because this was an ASAP job. So we unscrewed the bottom of the gas tank for a bigger exit hole, flipped it upside down, filled her with some argon gas. We then welded the pin hole, this required about 1/4 of a second of welding time.
KAABOOOOM
As you can see from the picture aparently not enough argon gas and it is now a cusom tank for skipping those hated pit stops at the endurance races. Well after telling myself how stupid I was and that "I can't belive I did that"... Russ being the good son went in to make some phone calls and find another tank, he found one down in Philly Pa, and told them to over night it..
His new tank and his old one side by side.
I spent the rest of the day on his body work, painted it a ultra white with a second top coat of pearl...
Next step was too wait..
Degsy overnighted me the decals and I now also had to wait for the new tank to arrive. 11:45 the UPS guy showed up with Degsy's decals and two tanks from the guy in Pa.. one to repair for him that had a dent in it and Degsy's new tank...
One and half hours later the tank was all painted white. Russ was working on painting the number plates and putting on decals while the paint dried. By evening Degsy's bike was done.
This is the bike he told me should look good from at least 50 feet while going fast, instead it looks pretty good standing next to it!
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Now we have to go in and get ready for our trip to VT tomorrow.