Maintenance & Technical > KX500 Original

Pipe Repair

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Jeeks:
I would have to see the freezing method first hand to believe it.  Think about it, how does the water know exactly where to push out the dent????

The air/torch method pinpoints the dent for precise removal.

Hillclimb#42:
It works. The ice quickly contracts the metal that is only held in the dent by the slightly stretched metal around the dent. In a body shop they use a shrinking hammer that looks like a waffle iron on the face. It tightens the stretched metal by putting a bunch of small dents in the same area. It actually doesn't fix it, but makes the dent shallow as possible for bondo or in the old days, lead. Hail damage or that size of dent is often fixed with this method of heating and cooling.
 The torch spiraling into the dent also will work. Then you need to put cold water on it to keep it popped out. At least thats how it works on body work. Sometimes it will make the dent pop up too high and you need to file or hammer and dolly back to shape.
 Its been my experience that dents thay can be fixed like this are very minor dents. Ones that would only matter, if they were on your hood of a new truck. Tiny dents on the pipe probably don't affect performance as much as they take away from the look of the bike. Dents that are real big have stretched the metal enough to stay distorted and the best you can hope for is to help it.
 I like the heating and cooling methods that I recently discovered that helps setting gears and tight tolerance bearrings. Heat the outside or housing, freeze the bearring or inner gear (clutch hub) and pieces seem to fall into their place without a press.

Jeeks:
Sorry, still not sold on the freezing method. I call BS on that.

Using water during autobody repair does not keep the dent out, it keeps the panel from warping around the work area.

The "dents" your referring to sound more like DINGS.  A dent to me would be a good WHACK with a baseball bat.  Dings I can live with, not dents.  I have formed many pieces of metal by hand, there are many ways to remove dents and dings.  Heat will help return the molecules to their original state.

Hillclimb#42:
I agree, "dings." Like hail damage. Have you watched paintless dent repair on hail damage? I agree too, that any dent big enough to cause performance problems would be tough to fix. Maybe you could make it better, and what's to lose if it doesn't work? It seems obvious though that heat alone wouldn't help or they would pop out while riding.
 I've heard about some local guys pressurizing their pipe with air pressure and  popping out dents in aftermarket pipes, but think stock pipes would be also tough. Plus you would probably need to weld up a crack 1/2 the time on a sizeable dent. This is just evryone's first thoughts when you put the first dent in a new pipe.
 

BDI:
The stock four stroke end caps are made out of two pieces then epoxied together. A buddy of mine gave me a brand new muffler off of a 07 crf that was taken off at his shop because the end cap had a dent from shipping.To put it on my 05 crf450x I had to move the lower mount 10mm. What I wanted to show is the end cap. I took it off fixed the dent and welded the end cap together. I blended the welds and refinished the end cap so that it looked like it was made as one piece.This is the end cap before dent removal, after dent removal,after refinishing and then after welding.

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