To heat or not to heat when straightening bent bars?

[1tontj]

My GF bent the bars a little on her 97 RT100. They are the stock steel bars.

My question is should I just pull the bars and bend them with the old pipe/vise trick, or would it help to add the torch to make them nice and orange before the vise/pipe straightening?

Thanks,
Phil

 

[Rooster]

My best advise....no pipe/vise trick, no heat. Just replace them with new. The bend point will be weak and susceptible to bending with even less force than that which bent them the first time.

It's a safety issue with me.

 

[1tontj]

Well they are only sligthly bent. Like she has been riding it bent for weeks. Just a tiny bend, but it would be nice if they were symetrical for the new hand gaurds I am going to make for them.

Phil

 

[Jon K.]

Rooster has the best advice, but if you must, I would suggest to bend them cold.

The metal will have some "memory" and should go back to the correct spot if you can get your bend forces in approximately the right direction.

If you heat it red, you have nearly no chance of putting them back exactly where they were.

 

[1tontj]

Ok, thanks.

Phil

 

[NGE]

new steel bars are cheap as all get out... like I think I paid $10 for mine.... give that some more thought before you put your girlfriend on bars that are weakned (and they ARE, and will be even more when you're done)... it's not that they aren't strong enough for normal use, it's that they will fail at the worst possible time, if they do fail...

 

[1966mustang]

Well dont heat it ill tell you that because when you heat it it takes alot of strength out of the bars. It spreads the molecules in the metal and can make them very flexible. I would just bend them like you were saying.

 

[moto851]

Bad idea

it would be a bad idea to try and straighten the bars at all because the bars were made in a mold which means that if you try to bend them back(no matter what) they will have a good chance to break.

Greg :aj:

 

[childoftheKD80]

Not quite...

it would be a bad idea to try and straighten the bars at all because the bars were made in a mold which means that if you try to bend them back(no matter what) they will have a good chance to break.
Greg :aj:

Actually they aren't made in any sort of mold, they're bent in a hydraulic pipe bender. They're bent cold so bend them back cold, they won't be any weaker then they were origionally if you bend in back cold.