Gas Tank Repair

[Walleye Guy 22]

Sorry for my late response getting back to all of you but I thought I should post our tank repair since all of you were so helpful.  Check it out, I think you'll like it.  A good friend of mine is a machinist and he made two aluminum "keys" to fit into each slot, one on each side of the tank, and each key has a helicoil (steel threads versus original aluminum) for the threaded knob.  He made each key such that the helicoil is centered on the witness mark on the tank which was left from the original knob (this ensures that the hood retaining knob will line up with the new threaded hole because the helicoil threads will be in the original position).  After this, I had my kids bake some cookies for one of our welders at work in exchange for him welding the keys to the tank.  Voila!  It's perfect now.  Only one side is shown in the attached pictures but both sides are the same.  Now we need to get a few of the original tank screws since a few are missing and I just made a post to see if anyone has a few extras they'd be willing to sell to me.  Thanks again for all the suggestions and help.