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Looking for a manual bender. At first i thought the JD2 model 3 but the die's are quire a bit more than the Pro Tools. So now I'm mainly looking at the Pro Tool 105 bender. The big question is what radius ist the best for building a roll cage 6" or 7"? I have 2 4th gen fbodies that need a cage and undecided on putting one in my 68. Thanks for any help.
I used an air/hydraulic JD32 bender to do my cage and chassis. Its a great machine and if I remember correctly the Pro Tools can't do much more than .134 wall (which is not typically an issue with race cars) while the JD can do solid.
I ended up ordering the Pro Tools 105 HD with a 6" radius die. I was having a little trouble finding tubing local so I held off ordering the bender keeping an eye on craigslist for a used one. I called a small truck/machinery repair shop local for ***** n giggles on the tubing. They had best price and had 200' waiting on me the next day. Now im just waiting on bender to arrive.
I ended up ordering the Pro Tools 105 HD with a 6" radius die. I was having a little trouble finding tubing local so I held off ordering the bender keeping an eye on craigslist for a used one. I called a small truck/machinery repair shop local for ***** n giggles on the tubing. They had best price and had 200' waiting on me the next day. Now im just waiting on bender to arrive.
I have the Pro Tools 105 Hd and love it. I added a bendpac air over hydraulic to it and mounted it on an old engine stand. Pro Tools are great people to deal with also!!
Figured I'd post an update to this. I origanally thought I was younger and in better shape than I was so I thought I could bend this manually. My garage is small and with my shelving, work bench, tool box's and car in there it wasnt possible to bolt bender to floor. So I welded some sqaure tube on top a 55 gallon drum and bolted the bender on it thinking I could fill it with water and be able to bend tubing in my driveway (asphalt). This worked but barrel would slowly walk a circle while you were manually bending. After bending a test 45 and 90 degree bend and the main hoop with a 4 foot handle that was enought for me. I ended up getting the Swag Offroad air/hydraulic ram mount and harbor freight air/hydraulic jack. Anybody considering a tubing bender this is a must. The ram mount was $110 and the ram was $90, best $200 I have ever spent and a lot cheaper than buying hydraulic conversion with the bender. I also used the harbor freight tubing notcher with Milwaukee hole saw. My notcher needed shimmed .105" to center the cut on tubing but worked fine after that. These are the only 2 pics I took during the process.
If you have not already seen this, take a look at "The Fabricator" series on youtube. He has an entire series of tube bending videos. This is just the first in a long series.
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Tube bender for cage? 
