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Doug Krebs
01-26-2004, 02:13 PM
This weekend we built a cage for Derek's blazer and it was pretty successful for the first go around. Having the bender welded to the box blade didn't help with the speed of the project. Everytime we need to do something different we had to pick it up and set it on a dolly and move it. Damn thing gets heavy after a while.

Anyways, I used the pirate technique "Bendin Tube 101" because it was easy to do and wanted to get aquainted with the bender, however will only go so far. It's annoying first of all because you have to draw it on the floor, and second it only does single plain bends.

Who has experience with multiple plane bends? Scott, Landon, Cody, Busa???

For reference and example I'll explain what I mean by a multiple plane bend. Take this EB for example, everything on the cage is pretty easy to do. The windshield loop has 2 different planes, but they aren't complicated one's.

What if you had a tube that went from the floor up to the dash and then made an angle towards the center of the EB and up to reach the roof. How do you calculate this? Most people on pirate say they use autocad. Do ya'll just estimate and use your eye?

chevsu
01-26-2004, 04:40 PM
i call it, buying extra tubing

i always just eye ball everything

or just measure to the center of the bends

works for me :flipoff2:

aggielr
01-26-2004, 04:43 PM
i have a chitload of straight pieces of coat hanger wire, and i bend it w/ the same radius as the die and then somewhat eyeball it, get one of the cheap angle finder and you can somewhat take educated guesses, but as cody said, just eyeballin it has worked so far

uglyota
01-27-2004, 11:34 AM
maybe you should write pirate4x4 and ask them to edit the article to include "make sure your bender is assembled correctly"
:D

Cajun
01-27-2004, 03:06 PM
Measure, measure, measure! And cut the tubing longer than you think you'll need it. You can always trim to fit, but expanding it is a b*tch!:flipoff2:

Doug Krebs
01-27-2004, 03:13 PM
Actually the box blade worked well for expanding it!! Just stick it in the uprights and push on the longer piece. On friday when the rebuild kit comes for the pump it should be easy to expand it with the double acting cylinder.

aggielr
01-27-2004, 03:18 PM
i think he means makin the tube longer, not straightenin a bend

Cajun
01-27-2004, 08:15 PM
Thanks for clearing that up Landon...:laughing: