I thought some of you guys might like this. I just finished building a cage with a friend of mine but due to our living conditions (we both live in apartments where we can't drill holes into the garage floor) we had to come up with a way to anchor his jd2 tubing bender to a solid surface. Here's what I came up with:





I figured a 5300lbs suburban would be more than sufficient to do the job. It ended up working great. I'll post sime pics of the cage at a later time. Here's one teaser though:

 

now that is really neat. great job.

 

is this Brandon's car? Teal EG hatch?

 

yeah, it is.

 

how much was the tube bender with die's? great job!

 

yeah what he said

 

Ha, that's a sweet setup

It's for that reason that I built the bender I did. No holes to drill in the floor.

Great job!

 

this is my setup. I guess its not as mobile in the sense you cant pick it up easily and bring it over toa buddy house. But its on wheels and can be moved around and runs off dc motor connected to a car battery so its cordless as well.

 

bad ***!^^^

 

It does the job. Bends to 90* in one stroke without having to repin the die. The toggle switch you can see on the bender. For forward and back. Pretty easy to use. Also use a digital angle finder for the rotation of the tubing to change the axis or to keep compound bends in the same plane. This is something that I make with it

 

Is that a Subaru subframe?

 

After doing the hoop and a-pillar bars I realized how nice it would be to have the bender bolted up to a nice flat, level floor. I had to use my angle finder to approximate the slope of the parking lot and then I didn't move the truck until I was done so I could use the same slope compesation for all the tubes. That electric setup looks like it would be real nice to use.

somewhere in the neighborhood of $700-$750. Just a die set by itself is $250-$300.

 

Baxter-the slope of whatever your on whether it be the driveway or on a mtn slope isnt what matters. Its the rotation/axis of the tubing that will throw of a compound bend. Pick up a bracket from tricktools or somewhere and find either an oil filled degree setup or digital. I prefer digital quick and easy to read and can be zero'd out. I'll get a picture of what I'm talking about

 

Here ya go. Its generally called a plane of bend bracket. Such simple tool will make your cage/tube bending infinitely easier. And will allow much more complex stuff to be dead on square.

 

Thanks for the input covertperformance. I will definately be picking one of those up.

 

ya, I use to hate trying to do b-pillar/compound straight bends and avoided compound bends with varying angles until i stumbled onto this ingenious tool. Been using it for several years now. Glad I could help.

 

I have a model 3 with an air/hydraulic conversion that I built a stand with wheels on one end and adjustable legs on the other. It rolls around easy and is stable with a 10ft+ piece hanging off. Its mobile enough to fit in a pick up or my work van. I will try to get some pics.