I think its time for me to own one. What are the preffered cheap ones? Basically doing cage and exhaust stuff, but may wind up making control arms and such someday.
I think its time for me to own one. What are the preffered cheap ones? Basically doing cage and exhaust stuff, but may wind up making control arms and such someday.
To piggyback, are there common benders that have dies down to 3/4 or 1 inch? I'd like to build a few things with small tubing but use that time as practice for big tube.
I've been looking for an answer to this question for years. I am convinced that the answer is there are plenty of cheap benders, but it doesn't matter because the price of dies dwarfs it quickly, and there is no good bender with cheap dies. For example, Eastwood recently came out with a bender that looks an awful lot like a a JD2, but for ~2/3 the price. Dies cost the same. I also saw a youtube video where an Aussie dude tried to make a super cheap pipe bender work well. In the end it looked like he had more $$$ into it than if he would have just purchased a nice one to start with.
I do not own one myself, but I have a JD2 bender and a SWAG off-road radius bender in my shop on semipermanent loan from a friend. both are nice pieces. I plan to do the hydraulic conversion to the JD2 in the near future. Not because it's too much work to bend by hand, but because it will require much less floor space when I tip it over 90°.
https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/learn-me-tubing-benders/131596/page1/
This covers the enthusiastic spectrum pretty well.
I am building this one.
JD2 with a ram seems to be the Miata equivalent in the Tube bending world.
I see all kinds of home-made and fix-the-cheap-option solutions even into sand-bending, but if you want to get a job done with a proper tool and not be learning tool design and fabrication, the JD2 looks like THE answer.
mazdeuce - Seth said:To piggyback, are there common benders that have dies down to 3/4 or 1 inch? I'd like to build a few things with small tubing but use that time as practice for big tube.
AccordianFolder covered the link I was going to send you, Dusterbd13..
Seth - ProTools (the dies I use with the GotTrikes bender) says they go as low as 1/2" round tube with a 2" Center Line Radius (CLR). You can see the list here. Looks like they support square and schedule 40 as well (from the top menu, go to Fabrication Tools > Dies and then choose one of the "105" series ones.).
I have a JD2 for cages and such. Worth every penny. Also have a hydraulic jack center push pipe bender for when I can use gas pipe or equivalent pipe measured by ID for things like dash board structures and other no critical steel tube jobs. For exhaust, neither of these work because the pipe wall is too thin and kinks. Instead of benders, I've found that if you heat the exhaust tube with a big torch and get it red, you can easily make whatever bends you want with no kinks. My plumbers torch with a big tip works great for this, but it still takes two people to pull it off. Put tube in vise. One person heats pipe and keeps chasing the red down the pipe as the second pushes/pulls the pipe to make the bend. Move slow and the results are fantastic. Learned this technique watching some Japanese dude on Youtube bending up bike exhausts.
Dies for the JD2 and ProTool benders show up on ebay regularly, some are better priced than paying full new price or w/ multiple discount.
I have the ProTool 105, manual only. Don't see the need for hydraulic assist at this time.
A tube bender is like a MIG welder, you'll find stuff to build once you have one.
In reply to tr8todd :
No kinks sure...i bet ovals the heck out of it tho with nothing inside to hold the shape
I just watched a video on the DeBoss Garage youtube channel where they built a roll cage using a hand bender from Princess Auto (they're in Canada.) It looked like the sort of thing that Harbor Freight probably sells, but it appeared to work pretty well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vp1cy73Ao0
From a customer service standpoint I would say JD2. For smaller stuff a conduit Bender works, just make sure you get a beefy one.
In reply to malibuguy :
If you made that bet, you would loose. Go to youtube and watch some vids. I've been using this technique for years, because I'm too cheap to buy mandrel bends and the kinked bends you get at the auto parts store and from custom shops just don't do it for me. You need a good propane torch, some leather gloves and an assistant that can do what they are told. In my case its my wife helping out so maybe that last part isn't all that important.
I have two benders, one for cages and one for small tubing. Neither will work for exhaust tubing, but 1/16th wall is doable.
The cage tubing bender is like this: (mine is from Williams low buck tools) This is the bender that was used for the cage in the AMC Spirit Build for the challenge.
All of the dies for these tend to be the more expensive item than the frame and hydraulics.
The small tubing bender is from Speedway motors:
I have just made a really small radius die for this to do a custom bend in thin wall aluminum tube. I also used it to build a yard kart from raw stock last year. This one requires attachment to some thing fairly solid. I use my 700 pound welding/fixturing plate.
Thanks for the info guys. I know Duster wants to build proper racecar stuff, but I'm looking to learn by building some outdoor chairs and racks and what not out of 1"-ish tubing. Get a feel for proper bending and fitting. Looking at benders and dies is interesting to say the least. It seems like the best bet is to decide which dies you prefer and go from there.
Steve made caging a car look simple. I figure with 3x the time he took, i can get 50% of the results.
However, looking at prices on the benders being reccomended, its almost better from a real money standpoint to buy a pre-bent kit.
Or mock up a cage from pvc pipe and have the tubes bent for me.
Lots to think about here.
The real $ versus challenge budget is a very real internal struggle. I was serious this year and re-bought a bunch of parts and swapped them out to get back under $2017 when I realized i had forgot to move the radiator over to the new spreadsheet and ended up at $2100 after adding everything up. I have a bunch of almost new parts in the basement and zero $ in the coffers to buy $2018 parts. Luckily there’s not much to buy, but until i build that $ back up i have no idea where tires are coming from.
bentwrench said:I am building this one.
I knee jerked bought the plans for this without fully researching it and the dies are so expensive. I can buy a bender with 3 dies for the cost of 2 dies for this bender...then the cost of the parts to build it
I built that one, and I built it to use the Pro-Tool dies.
Many people alter the design to use JD2 dies, which I should have done, as they are available local to me, as are their off-shore clones.
The GotTrikes is a decent design, and I like the mobility and the not-have-to-clamp-it-down factor.
Also consider if you want to bend Cobra-style hoops. You'll need a pricier die to do 180° bends.
I bought the Eastwood HD bender with 1.5 and 1.75 shoes. I added the air over hydraulic cylinder. It has built two cages so far. It is awesome.
Edit: This one.
I ended up with the affordable bender and i love it. I'm converting it to air over hydraulic though because squeezing the air trigger has to be better than pumping the jack a million times.
In reply to Toyman01 (Forum Supporter) :
Is the Eastwood bender just a re-branded JD2? It sure looks like it...
I built this one: https://chopperbuildershandbook.com/vbender1.html
Very similiar to the gottrikes bender, but uses JD2 dies (chosen because I'm familiar with them and everyone I know uses JD2 so I could borrow dies) and the drawings are free.
I used a manual pump hydraulic cylinder for an engine hoist, it's a little tedious but it's doable for the few bends it takes to cage a car, and you have good control with the manual cylinder.
I have the "Magnum" brand copy of the JD2 bender above at work. https://www.kmstools.com/magnum-2-tubing-bender-107353 It has not seen any use in the five years I've had it.
The dies are not as nice as the "Pro-Tools" dies, but I'm sure it will work well. These usually go on sale for under $1000 pretty often. I built my GotTrikes back in 2010 for $540CDN (including 1 die). I think I used it for about three projects.
Here is the tubing bender I built, using 'affordable bender' dies. As shown in the video, there really is only a single key dimension, there is no reason for 'plans' just get that one thing right and the rest not matter too much. I have this plan to make my own die --- use some thin plates bolted together using circles of different diameters and then smooth out the steps of the plates using a grinding cylinder, want to try that for a 1-3/4 die.
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