Nerf bars?

I've done a search, so the on here nazis can put your guns down.
What I want to know is; the guys who have built them, what size radius' did you bend, and what size bar did you use?
I'm going to bend them up myself, and tig, grind, and polish them at work. I want to build some like on the Ala-kart for my model a project.

 

7/8" OD, .156 wall DOM tubing.
(Works great for making your own draglinks and tie rods.)

This size tubing is the same size as the aftermarket manufacturers use for their 4-bars, drag links and tie rods.

Here's a couple pics.
The one taken from the back and low down makes it look like there's a kink in the tubing, but it's an optical illusion due to the metal stored under the car.

2nd pic is a better overall view.

3rd pic shows the home-made polyurethane bushing rings.
Having an adjustable bushing at all three corners of the hairpin makes life easy in the installation dept. as well as adjusting for the correct caster.

The hairpins will get a small gusset inside the rearmost corner when finish welding is done.

The hairpins were bent on a Harbor Freight pipe bender.
Note that this is not the tubing bender.
The mandrels etc. are all the wrong size for bending tubing except for the 1" pipe mandrel which fits the 7/8" OD tubing quite well.
The pipe bender is useless for other tubing sizes.

You can also do the pack the tubing with dry sand, seal it and heat & bend.
It's an old method that works very well.

This last pic shows the polyurethane bushing rings in un-assembled form.
Easy to make, they're cut out of 1 3/8" OD x .120 wall DOM tubing and machined square with light chamfers on the edges.
The threaded piece is a grade 8 bolt with head machined round.
They get TIG'd together eventually.

 

C9, thanks for that...but I was meaning more of something like this.

 

So nobody has made their own?

 

I've never made my own, but hopefully this link might help you. It seems like a fairly reasonable price. I'm sure you can cut them down for your application.

http://www.dagelsstreetrods.com/nerf bar kit.htm

Pat

 

I made a small nerf for my quickchange.

 

Thanks guys. that link helped. The one they showed looked about right, and it says they use 7/8".
I'm making a jig at work, I'll turn some stock to bend the radius' around, and looking at that sight I think I might use some dowls to line the 2 halves up. I was going to try and make it as a one piece.
Anyone have any clues on this? Yay or nay on that idea?

 

I'm guessing you're going to use the dry sand packed in the tube trick?

It works well.
AV8 posted some pics of Kent Fuller bending some dragster tubing with larger tubing, packed sand and some heat.
SamIyam made a wooden form to bend some tubing around.
Can't remember if it was for hairpins or nerfs.
The wooden form worked well, but did erupt in flames.
Regardless he got it done and it looked good.


The pic below shows an option to nerf bars.
A 'gasser' bumper of sorts, it offers fair protection to the body rear.

Aside from the bumper bit, the gasser bumper was chosen to add a horizontal style component to the rear of the 32.
The 32 has too many vertical style components which makes the car look narrow as well as look too high when viewed from the back.

Not sure what I'm going to do in the back of the 31.
I've thought of two vertical nerfs with 1 1/2" tubing, sorta race car style and also a 7/8" tubing full width nerf which would look good.

The 31 does a little better in the horizontal/vertical style component area due to it's not as tall trunk area due to the lower 31 body and the bobbed fenders on the rear make it appear wider there as well.

Even so, the gasser bumpers are easy to knock out.
The 32 bumper is 2 5/8" x .120 wall tubing.
A pair of short 3/16" CR brackets on each side use two bolts to adapt to the 1 x 2" x .120 wall rectangular tubing that runs forward to the frame rails and bolts on there.
The bolts for all this are stainless and have the bolt heads turned out in a shallow dish.
The end caps are billet TM aluminum pieces turned to a slip fit and JB Welded in after the black powder was applied.

If I do a gasser bumper for the 31, the plan is to turn threads on the tubing ends and make a pair of matching thread billet TM aluminum screw on pieces that more closely resemble the plumbing style caps on the pipe/screw on cap gasser bumpers from back in the day.

One small suggestion, instead of welding the 1/4" frame to nerf adapter brackets on a full-width nerf, make a clever, perhaps even hidden bolt on setup to adapt the nerfs to the brackets, chrome plate the nerfs and paint the brackets black so the nerfs will have a floating appearance.
Polished stainless allens sunk into a crush tube should work there.

 

I made mine from 3/4 black barstock. Using cold rolled would have been better because it polishes easier. I used one of those cheap "harbor freight" pipe benders to get the 180 degree bends, and some heat to get the other bends.