Restoring vintage motorcycle gastanks
Why I’ve Been Restoring Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Tanks Since 2007 — and Why I’ll Never Stop
If you own a vintage Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha, or Suzuki, you already know the tank isn’t just a fuel reservoir. It’s the heart of the bike. It’s what people see first. It’s what makes a ’72 Honda CB350 look like a museum piece or a parts bike.
I started doing motorcycle tank PDR in 2007. By that point, I’d already been doing paintless dent repair on cars for over a decade Dent Dynamics has been running in Santa Rosa since 1993. But motorcycles were different. The tools didn’t exist. The techniques weren’t established. The access points on a vintage tank are brutal thick steel, tight curves, original paint that can’t be replaced. I had to figure it out from scratch.
So I did. I invented the PDR Tank Vice. I developed tools specifically for motorcycle tanks. And over the past 18 years, I’ve worked on more than 1,380 motorcycle tanks.
A lot of those have been vintage Japanese bikes — CB’s, Z’s, RD’s, GS’s, XS’s. The tanks on these machines are irreplaceable. The original paint on a survivor bike is worth more than any repaint could ever be. When a traditional body shop gets their hands on one, that paint is gone. The originality is gone. The value takes a hit it doesn’t recover from.
PDR changes that equation. No filler. No paint. No heat. The metal goes back where it belongs, and the original finish stays intact. For a collector or a restorer, that’s not just convenient it’s the only option that makes sense.
I’ve had tanks come through my shop from all over the country. Guys shipping in tanks they’ve been sitting on for years, waiting for someone who could actually handle them without destroying what makes them special.
That’s what I do. That’s what I’ve done since 2007.
If you’ve got a vintage tank that needs work, let’s talk.
