Using a hydraulic tubing bender

[germ]

Saw this thread http://board.marlincrawler.com/index.php?topic=10402.0 but didn't want to hijack it, so thought i would start a new one. what is your folks thoughts on bending the smaller stuff. I want to avoid kinking the pipe/tube, and make life as easy as possible. I saw the suggestion about filling with sand/water, but seems like a PITA. I thought about heating the tubing with a gas torch before bending...would that help?

I'm planning on building a roof rack with 1/2" pipe (doesn't need to be super strong), and some bumpers with 1-1.25" DOM. I'll probably make a roll cage with the same stuff.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks in advance for your input.
Erik

[Hyena]

You can bend the metal for the rack with a torche, but that weakens it so you shouldn't do that for the bumpers.

[germ]

Thanks...I'll keep that in mind

Any other suggestions?

[Willy Mammoth]

For small stuff you can buy a pipe bender from habor freight for about $89 that will work fine, but for the larger stuff you need a rollcage bender to do it rite.

[germ]

pipe bender from habor freight for about $89 that will work fine,

That's the one I've got, havn't taken it out of the box yet. I read the article over on pirate, and that helped some. I suppose I'll just have to get some tube and start bending.

Thanks for the input.
Erik

[KYOTA]

just remember thats a pipe bender not a tube bender. The dies with your harbor freight bender are for pipe dimensions, pipe is ID and tube is OD, so for example the 1.25" die is for  1.25" ID (pipe) which is actually 1.66 OD (sch. 40). And yes packing the pipe with sand makes a difference.

[MiniSimp]

If you are only bending small tubing (1/2") you can use an EMT conduit bender. I think actual OD for EMT is 0.55 so it should do good. I would still heat it up though.

[germ]

Thanks for the input. I'll let you know how it goes when i finally get off my a$$ and do some.

Erik