I'm pretty used to living with the alloy as I made the Egli tank 9 years ago now. No dents in that one. If I drop the bike then the alloy tank will likely get a bigger dent than steel, but either way you have a big problem.
Speaking of which, I recall that it was Ross Thompson who finally properly repaired my friend's original Series A Vincent Rapide tank.
The tank was full of dents filled with lead and Bondo. It went to a local metal shaping expert who unsoldered the bottom and worked the dents out. He spent a lot of hours doing that and soldering it back together. Cost was about $3,000. Then my friend put fuel in it. It had about 9 leaks.
The metal shaper said, not my fault, I'm a metal shaping expert, not a soldering expert.
So a soldering expert was hired to fix the leaks $1000 later it was leakproof. The metalshaping expert's job had improved the surface of the tank a lot, but it still looked pretty rough to me.
Next it went to a very high end painter who was known for doing expensive custom Harley paint jobs. He made a nice job of it,cost about $2,000
Then my friend installed it and found that, after being filled with fuel for awhile, still had a weep. He tried fixing it and ended up overpressurizing it which turned it into a very large strange looking tank.
At this point it was shipped to Ross Thompson Metal Finishing.
We don't know how did it, but with great skill and many careful hours spent, he took it all apart, reshaped it to original shape and put it back together such that it was sealed. Every surface was perfect this time, no "patina"
I believe that ordeal cost about $3,000.
Now it went back to the fancy painter for another $2,000 paint job.
That's how to spend $11,000 fixing a motorcycle fuel tank.
A steel one at that!
Glen