Hey guys, a little OT with the project that I'm building but the info applies to us all. My buddies and I are fabricating a roll cage for a LeMons car. We bought a manual D Squared bender and a few sticks of 1 3/4 .120 wall DOM steel tubing. This stuff is out of control difficult to bend! Great from a safety standpoint, not so great for ease of use. Are there any tricks to making this stuff a little easier to manage? A cheater pipe is on the list. Hydraulics would be nice but dropping another $600 isn't in the budget. Greasing the die didn't help. Is this just one of those things where a little extra sweat is just part of the deal? Sent from my SM-N910V using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
find a buddy who works at an exhaust shop....that's how I did the bar in my 55 chevy I also made patterns from old wood paneling, to know I was bending it just right, since the bender was not at the car
We're past the point of having someone else do the job for us. The bender alone was comprable to the price you pay for pre made cages online. I'm looking for tips on how to work smarter, not harder at this point Sent from my SM-N910V using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
In my opinion you purchased the best bender on the market,, that said,, the cheater pipe just needs to be longer to get a bud or two on it. The grease just needs to be on rubbing block. And there is a correct way to put the rubbing block in,, the radius edge forward. Get after it.
I just modified a simple bracket on my JD squared bender and hooked a cheap harbor freight porta ram to it. I bend 2 inch .250 wall regularly with it making dropped tube axles. Sucks to hand pump, but sure beats pushing and pulling on a bar.
SWAG Mfg. makes a pretty nice bracket setup to put a Harbor Freight air-over-hydraulic cylinder on these benders.
Yes, this is your best low buck solution. There is some talk about side loading the ram with the swag unit, which is true, but for that size tube this should be able to get it done with no issues.
I admit it takes some muscle to bend .120 wall but its not so hard that I cant/dont bend it on my JD2 model 32 bender... if its too hard for you a longer handle would be my suggestion before I spent more $$ on hydraulics
Ok thanks a bunch everyone. We'll get a longer handle made up and anchor it to the floor a bit better and go from there. Saturday we're supposed to do some fabbing. I'll let you all know how it goes. Sent from my SM-N910V using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Seems like when you go to DOM for cage the material goes to about .132, just make sure before going to all the trouble.
Due to the fact that the commonly available ERW tubing is generally thinner than its nominal size it is a good idea to use .130 wall to meet most sanctioning bodies' .118 wall minimum spec. What is sold as .120 is generally around .112/4. If you use DOM or CDS mild the tolerances are much tighter during the manufacturing process and the .120 wall will work. For what the OP wants to do the ERW is more than enough and a lot cheaper than DOM or CDS (which is close to the price of 4130 moly). Here is a bit of background on the manufacturing process: https://www.metalsupermarkets.com/difference-between-erw-dom-and-seamless-tube/ Roo
I have bent about a collective mile of DOM on my JD2. from 1" to 2", with 1-3/4" being the average. I was, at one one point, making off-road control arms and panhard bars out of 1-3/4" and 2" x 1/4" wall DOM. I run a 6' cheater bar, and have it bolted to the floor. This panhard bar is 1-3/4" x 1/4" DOM. I bent it all by me onsies, with a 6' cheater.
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