Need advice re: straightening a bent rear brake pedal?

My bike has had a bent rear brake pedal since I got. It's not really cosmetically noticeable but I know it's there and prefer it wasn't, especially when I have to pigeon toe to hold the bike up on a hill.

Here's my cunning plan: I picked up a length of heavy pipe (3' long 2" inside diameter) from the dump. It fits right over the pedal up to right near the elbow. I was going to get a friend to heat up the elbow with a propane torch while I gently, incrementally, holding my breath waiting for it to snap, coax it out a hair. I'd be happy with a quarter inch, ecstatic if it came out half an inch.

Is this a hare brain scheme? Does it have any chance of succeeding or am I about to make a $200 mistake? Thanks.

 

Are you taking the pedal off. I would be careful with a torch that close to the engine. Certainly a fire hazzard.

Mine is bent inward too. Has been for about 3 years now. A friend and I wrenched on it with a pipe but it did not want to or move for that matter a bit. Hasn't bothered me in the slightes riding. If I ever get a bee in my bonnet over it, I will just go out and get a new pedal.

 

For starters a propane torch won't get it hot enough and I wouldn't like pulling that hard on it with it still mounted in the frame

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yxiv3CBMS4M

 

Agree with Norm, put it in a vice and use no heat. Try to locate the best place for applying force. You'll almost always get some movement the first time sufficient force is used, but going for a second move is more risky. :dread:

1/4" is usually easy.

 

So you're saying, one friend on the torch, another one on the fire extinguisher? :crushed: May just try and fuggedaboutit.

 

Certainly no big deal if you have the right gear

 

I think I would look up the price for the replacement part. You may find that the cost of it is not worth the trouble going through trying to straighten it.

 

What if this dude has a Harley? A pedal could be as much as 1,000 pesos and three hours labor to get it off the bike.

Maybe that propane torch is not such a bad idea after all.

 

you didn't say what bike.

oxy/acetylene tourch, put it in a vise heat the spot where it needs to bend till it's orange. use your pipe to straighten. won't take much force at all. If the lever is chrome, it will be permanently discolored.

Try ebay for a replacement. I've been able to get everything I need for my 30 year old 700 including shift lever and linkage for $15.

 

Need not know if pedal is steel or cast aluminum. Steel you can heat and bend, and it will go back to original shape, aluminum stretches and will not return to original shape. My '03 aluminum pedal was bent slightly, just learned to live with it.

 

Good call on the aluminium. I've seen Jesse James soften aluminium sheet to form tanks. Wonder if it would leave the pedal too soft to use?

 

I bent mine back with a tire iron. Took all of 15 seconds. Nice and smooth and now it looks perfect.

 

My badly bent steel pedal on my '95 was very easily bent back using the closed end of a 19(?) mm combination wrench hooked over the "toe" part of the pedal. No heat, no cheater bar. Easy peasy - literally took 5-10 seconds!

 

This is a good and practical suggestion!
The pedal was bent once and didn't break. It will probably bend back and still not break or crack.
I looked at my bike and your gen 6th pedal is cast aluminum and probably pretty ductile. Don't use a propane torch - you can't control the temp accurately and you can burn the Al and ruin it. Propane in a normal torch can heat to 1900 deg F. Aluminum will soften for bending around 600 deg. F. Heating shouldn't hurt anything if you do it right. So if you really want to heat it up do it in your oven at maybe 550 deg F. But then after you do the bend put it back in the oven and turn the oven off to let it cool slowly. (I just searched some of this out on the interweb...)

 

My 2000 was laid down by a PO and the pedal was bent. I bent it back with no heat, mounted on the bike. Works fine years later. I'd have a replacement ready just in case.

Jose

 

I guess one of these days I should update my profile and specify that I do in fact own a VFR. (Randy can verify this.) My thinking was, um, this a VFR forum but you know what happens when you assume.

Anyway, it's an '02, and I don't want to break the pedal. Dude at the service dept at Holeshot (Honda etc dealer) looked at it and said "If it was my bike I wouldn't hesitate to put it in a vice, heat it up with a torch, and bend it back." So I went home, and with the tools I have, could not budge the mounting bolts to take it off. So then, always looking for a shortcut, I thought why not just bend it on the bike? And here I am.

Thanks for all your responses but I'm still confused. I wasn't planning on heating it to red hot with a torch, just enough to (hopefully) make it bend a little easier. What I'm talking about is a very imprecise science with a ham-fisted mechanic and a length of pipe.

 

Looks like a new pedal is aboot 84 pesos ( USP)

The bolt that is giving you fits was torqued at the factory. To remove it you will need a socket and a long lever like those old Greek dudes used on their bikes a long time ago.

Dazzle the service dude too by asking to borrow a gear puller to get that puppy off the spline. If the service dude is an old Greek dude, you're in luck.

If ya have access to a bigass vice since the pedal is steel once you get it off the bike and since nobody here really has a clear idea of how badly the pedal is bent, a couple of turns on the vice might be the way to go.

 

If that pedal is steel, then it's a special proprietary Honda Steel that magnets don't stick to, so I'm going to take a wild guess and say it's aluminum.:bull_head:

 

Guessing is good when you don't know shit to start with and ask questions that contain little or no usable information sufficient to address same.

Now that we know your bent lever, the one that is two hundred bucks, is aluminum on one other dudes bike and may not really be cast but forged, there is a chance that since magnets are polarized you may have done this uber scientific analysis ass backward.

I now don my hare shirt in deference to your combined powers of communication and deduction.