General Fabrication

When I was building my sliders I talked to the guys at CBI about how they notch tubes. They said the same thing.

Do you generally have to notch a tube before bending it? Seems like it might not fit in the saw if its got a big bed.

 

I personally wouldn't notch with a chop saw but that's me. It's not very accurate having the flip the tube to notch the other side but when we notch we do 250 to 500 parts at a time.

Notching on a bend can be tricky with any machine we notch on bends all the time with ours. If they are really steep I move to the hand plasma and angle grinder to make those.

 

You do all of the bending, then notch the tube. It is one of those things that feels weird when you are first learning how to do it. It takes practice, but once you learn it, is so fast. I think the scary part is removing the sliding clamp and just having to hold the tube in place yourself. It seems a little un-safe when you are first learning, but like anything once you do it a for a while it is 2nd nature.

When I was working professionally I personally built over 20 tube chassis for sand cars all with the chop saw method. Other than doing the left and right sides, almost every notch is different so it really helps speed things up because your not re-adjusting the notcher every couple minutes. Plus when you build a tube chassis your using 3 or 4 different sizes of tubing so you don't have to adjust for that with a chop saw, just cut and go. We even did 5 full TIG chassis while I was there, all with the chop saw method, so you can be precise, it just takes time and patients.

 

For Halloween

 

That looks pretty bad-ass!

 

i bought this bed cage from another member and have a friend that is going to weld it on any advice on placement. im trying to do it without cutting huge holes in the bed itself.

 

Anyone has used this tube benders? Are they good?



http://www.affordablebender.com/col...roducts/affordable-bender-112-die-on-7-radius

 

Wouldn't bother since it can't bend .120 wall dom.

 

What tube would you use for a bumper?

 

.120 wall dom is the standard if you plan on using your truck. For pavement princesses .120 wall HREW will be fine.

 

pavement princess hahaha, so what bender do you recommend for doing a .120 wall dom bumper?

 

Jd2 model 3 or model 32. Find at jd2.com

 

JD2 is the best bang for your buck. Buying a bender to build just one bumper might not really be worth it IMO. After buying everything you need you could have a custom one made for less money.

 

I built my whole truck with one of those. It's a piece of shit, but it works. I did bend .120 wall DOM with it, but it was hard on it. The trick is to use WD-40 on the die. The biggest problem is the U clamp that holds the tubing into the die. It can't handle the force of .120 wall and bends the bolt. I drilled it out and put a larger grade 8 bolt in and it worked ok. It is very difficult to repeat bend angles, i.e. make two pieces with identical bends. The marks on the die are largely useless, so I made my own marks with a sharpie. When I was done building my cage I gave it away for free.

 

I have several projects in mind

 

Good to know, I was about to order it Ill go with the model 3 then

 

Ahh that will make it worth it.

 

anyone

 

What size shocks are you going to run? Ideally, you want a 1:1 ratio at full stuff (perfectly vertical shocks) but depending on what springs you are running that may require 18" stroke shocks. If you want to tilt your shocks forward of the axle then you can get away with shorter shocks. Just depends on what you want to do.