Looking to pick up a tubing bender soon. I can pick up a small hydraulic type kind of like the one that Speedway sells for a fairly decent price. You get choice of one die with it. Should I get the 1 3/4 or the 1 5/8? I plan on using it for roll bars and cages and I also would like to try to build a fed with it.
You need to buy the die for the size of tubing you will be bending. A larger die than the tubing being bent will flatten the tubing. There is no compromise. To do a good job you need to have a die for every different size of material you plan to work with. Buy the bender and then get all the different sized dies. Expensive but no way around it.
1 5/8 die is the one in my bender 90% of the time. That's the size for NHRA roll cages, I think you have to go to 1 3/4 if just a roll bar and not a cage to be legal but I haven't built just a roll bar in years so I'd have to look it up. I think you can use 1 1/2 on a FED but I'm sure they wouldn't care if you went up a size and use 1 5/8. I think I'd try to pony up and buy the set of dies so you could do whatever you wanted.
I know the one speedway sells is fairly "cheaper" but I also heard it flexes under heavy wall tubing and can't bend that thick anyways (from what I remember). I ended up going with JD2 tubing bender, very high quality and plenty of dies to choose from, i've got 1 1/2 and 1 round dies, plus you can always add a hydraulic attachment later . Let me tell you this is an awesome bender, and if your going to be doing a lot of bending I don't know if you'd be pleased with the one like from speedway; although that's just my opinion since i've never actually seen or used one. As far as size it really depends on what your going to be building the majority of your cages/ roll bars for.
I have used jd2 benders before at shops I have worked in. But the bender I am buying is just for home use and will probably only be used once or twice a year. So I can't justify spending the big bucks on the jd2.
Got one of the ones from Speedway and have bent the cage tubing (1 3/4") for our HA/GR project ( http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=189651 ) with it. Works good for our purposes.
That sounds about right. I think I will go for the 1 3/4 die when I order mine. I want to build a late 50's style f.e.d. and I know a lot of them used 1 3/4 for the cage. Thanks for your help.
I have a JD2 in my shop, two dies, 1 3/4 and 1". I also converted mine to hydraulic which is sweet especially on DOM. At the time I was building 4x4 stuff, and 1 3/4 was the standard for that. What ever size you get, buy the 240* dies so that you can get 180* bends out of it.
For about 300 bucks more you could buy the JD Squard bender and I can almost bet you would me much happier. I have owned the JD2 bender for about 5 years now and love it. I bent the entire cage for my Lakester with it (1.750 X .120 DOM). It may be a bit more expense now but it will pay off in the end.
YEP-If you can spend a little more or get lucky a JD2 or Hossfield will spoil you! My brother found a Hossfield for 250 dollars at an auction and it had some dies with it!
What swimeasy said-Hossfeld has been in business for 70+ years and stocks hundreds of different dies for it's #2 bender.American bender is also making #2 clones for a few bucks less.
We have the Pro Tools 105 manual bender with 1 1/2, 1 5/8. and 1 3/4 dies. Of the three I think we have used the 1 1/2 and 1/5/8 more. It takes some effort on the bigger tubing sizes but we made a longer handle for it and for as much as we use it, which isn't that often, the manual model is fine. Don
got a JMR 1000-90 with about 7 different die sizes... 1 5/8 is used the most... great compact bender and does an excellent job on thick wall tubing plus is 110 volt so I can use it anywhere
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