Hydroforming a fuel tank

MTB Moto

MTB Moto

New Member
Has anyone tried it?

It would be tougher to make a fuel tank that had to fit a certain spot, like between 2 toptubes, but it doesn't seem that hard to do, and could be made from 2 pieces of material rather than multi pieces. If done with thicker sheet material it could actually be welded in "as" the toptube.

For something like a fuel tank there are no small concave corners and its more like a balloon shape. plus the fuel outlet could be used as a filler for the hydro fluid.

I have also seen it done for 2 stroke exhaust systems.

Another concept is to fill the material sandwich with water then freeze it, thaw it, add more water, freeze it again and so on till the desired shape was achieved. I have done this with a dented motorcycle exhaust and it worked great!
 
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Thats a pretty cool trick to fix the exaust ... i like it .

I don,t know how you would form an irregular shape without some kind of a form .
 
you can achieve the same results with airpressure , as I learned by accident when leak testing my fuel tank .
 
Ya good stuff...

... hydroforming gives it that modern look by allowing shapes rather than tubing, but don't get me wrong tubing is cool also, just rounded up some steel stock material to play hydroman with! No project purpose just playing/learning first.

At least with hydro...

... it will keep me away from the ox/acy torch method, talk about dangerous stuff... lets just, had a few explosions!... LOL
 
The whole premise behind hydroforming is that you can't compress water. You can however, compress air. You might get some metal deformation, but no where near as much as with water. I think someone here mention leak testing a homemade fuel tank by pressurizing it with air to submerge it in water. It gave the flat surfaces a more rounded appearance.

MHF
 
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