For those of you who are skilled enough to fabricate your own cages, how do you go about bending your tube? Big tube bender I guess? I’ll likely be making a roll bar for my k5 and trying to figure out the best way to go about it.
CK5
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Roll bar tube bending question
- Thread starter Jake_C_
- Start date
bp71k5
3/4 ton status
tubing bender, JD2 makes one. If you only plan on a roll bar, might make sense to just pay someone or borrow one. Kinda pricy for just a roll bar.
I built my bender using the Takacs cycles plans online, seems to be the popular plan. It uses the pro tools dies and a HF air over hydraulic ram. Works great. It also does not need to be bolted down which is great, I store it under a bench. If you like to fab it comes in handy often, especially as you get more dies. If the roll bar is the only project then a pre fab option might be better.
Tube_Bender (gottrikes.com)
Tube_Bender (gottrikes.com)
Yeah I figured I’d have someone do it for me already, just thought maybe there was a cheap way to go about doing it yourself, thanks for the info.
Great info, thanks I’ll look into it.
The die cost alone make it not worth it for two simple bends.
bend-tech EZ bending software and a tubing bender gets good results with little waste.
https://www.bend-tech.com/ez/
https://www.bend-tech.com/ez/
I was face with this decision a few years ago and I bought a pre-bent diy4x cage kit. The cost of the kit vs a bender / die / software was similar and I have no interest in side work anymore so this worked for me. I did however buy a notcher, I'm pretty sure any additional tubes I add will be straight so I just need the ability to notch the tubing.
I know a couple welders/fabricators that work at shops that could probably do it for me. I want to make a stock 74-75 roll bar (don’t think they had them in 73?) but the floor of my blazer isn’t the same as the early ones so I’ll have to do some custom work so I figured instead of buying an old one and chopping it up to fit I might as well make a new one.
the stock bar for the full tops was just a B pillar hoop, right? I know Kert has sold several people just that bar for similar set ups. If that's all you're building I definitely don't think that project is worth the $800+ for a bender set up.
Yes just a single bar with kickouts at the bottom, yeah I’m not getting a bender, a friend of mine already said he could do it but I like trying to do things myself if I can.
Imo after you buy the bender the Dom tube and all the head scratching buying it from Diy4x is still the better option I have a jd2 tube bender which I love but the time and money just isn’t worth it when kurts done all the hard work already for you just my 2 cents .
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As already stated above unless you have plans to do more fabrication of cages, bumpers, etc... in the future you will have more in a decent tube bender than just paying for a shop to do this. Even if you go the budget build-it-yourself bender you still need to purchase a die which is probably a couple hundred $. Then add in the cost of a relatively small quantity of tube and you are way over what a shop would probably charge for a simple b-pillar bar. Our off-road club always goes in together to buy large orders of tubing in 20' sticks because it's a lot cheaper than small sections.
Guess I have to mention it because if you search the internet it will come up....many people will use the $50 Harbor Freight pipe bender. If you have the right technique and the right size tubing to fit in the pipe size dies I have seen decent results. But overall I would recommend going to a person who has an actual tube bender and some experience.
Guess I have to mention it because if you search the internet it will come up....many people will use the $50 Harbor Freight pipe bender. If you have the right technique and the right size tubing to fit in the pipe size dies I have seen decent results. But overall I would recommend going to a person who has an actual tube bender and some experience.
Yeah like I said I’m just going to have a friend of mine who works at a shop that has the equipment to do it. Makes the most sense to me.
