JohnK
06-11-2019, 05:20 PM
OK, time for today's rant...
Last week I made life unnecessarily complicated for myself when attempting to dial indicate my bellhousing with a cheap Amazon dial indicator gauge and magnetic base that never gave repeatable results and broke on the third use. I ended up buying a suitable tool and getting the job done with far less frustration.
Well, this is apparently a theme in my garage at the moment. I'm now starting to do some mock-up of brake and fuel lines (templating with Nicopp first before making the real ones out of stainless steel). I purchased several tools from Eastwood - flaring tool, tubing straightener, tubing cutter, deburring tool, and the tubing bender that can handle different tubing sizes from 3/16" - 3-8". You know the one... it's sold under a bunch of different names all over the place. Who wouldn't want a tool that can bend all the different sizes of tubing on the car, right?
https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=108722&d=1560290160
All the Eastwood stuff is working beautifully except for that tubing bender, which has been an endless source of frustration and wasted tubing for me. I started by trying to make the section of tubing that connects the two front brakes... the one that "V"s at the front cross brace. I ended up scrapping two 5' sections of tubing as I couldn't get accurately placed bends with that tool. Accurate angles. Sure. Accurate position? Forget about it. In the photo above, you can see that it's darn-near impossible to figure out where the "0" "R" and "L" marks are for 4 different tubing sizes.
I spent some time studying up on how to accurately bend tubing on Youtube, and the common theme was to get a good quality tubing bender (duh). So I picked up two Ridgid 600-series tubing benders (model 38028 for 3/16" tubing and model 38043 for 3/8" tubing). Wow. What a difference. Now, I'm not suggesting that one necessarily needs to spend this much to get good results, but I will suggest that there are three key features on these benders that make them FAR more accurate than the other bender:
1) dedicated bender for a single size of tubing
2) a clamp that locks the tube in position before bending
3) ability to clamp it in a vice to work (this one is not absolutely necessary but makes life sooooo much easier).
Here's the 3/16" bender clamped in my vice making some practice bends. I'm amazed at how accurately I can bend with this thing. I'm sure that a master tubing bender could easily make do with the cheaper tool but for someone like me that's doing this for the first time unnecessarily handcuffing myself with a cheap tool was driving me nuts.
(Rant over)
https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=108721&d=1560290152
Last week I made life unnecessarily complicated for myself when attempting to dial indicate my bellhousing with a cheap Amazon dial indicator gauge and magnetic base that never gave repeatable results and broke on the third use. I ended up buying a suitable tool and getting the job done with far less frustration.
Well, this is apparently a theme in my garage at the moment. I'm now starting to do some mock-up of brake and fuel lines (templating with Nicopp first before making the real ones out of stainless steel). I purchased several tools from Eastwood - flaring tool, tubing straightener, tubing cutter, deburring tool, and the tubing bender that can handle different tubing sizes from 3/16" - 3-8". You know the one... it's sold under a bunch of different names all over the place. Who wouldn't want a tool that can bend all the different sizes of tubing on the car, right?
https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=108722&d=1560290160
All the Eastwood stuff is working beautifully except for that tubing bender, which has been an endless source of frustration and wasted tubing for me. I started by trying to make the section of tubing that connects the two front brakes... the one that "V"s at the front cross brace. I ended up scrapping two 5' sections of tubing as I couldn't get accurately placed bends with that tool. Accurate angles. Sure. Accurate position? Forget about it. In the photo above, you can see that it's darn-near impossible to figure out where the "0" "R" and "L" marks are for 4 different tubing sizes.
I spent some time studying up on how to accurately bend tubing on Youtube, and the common theme was to get a good quality tubing bender (duh). So I picked up two Ridgid 600-series tubing benders (model 38028 for 3/16" tubing and model 38043 for 3/8" tubing). Wow. What a difference. Now, I'm not suggesting that one necessarily needs to spend this much to get good results, but I will suggest that there are three key features on these benders that make them FAR more accurate than the other bender:
1) dedicated bender for a single size of tubing
2) a clamp that locks the tube in position before bending
3) ability to clamp it in a vice to work (this one is not absolutely necessary but makes life sooooo much easier).
Here's the 3/16" bender clamped in my vice making some practice bends. I'm amazed at how accurately I can bend with this thing. I'm sure that a master tubing bender could easily make do with the cheaper tool but for someone like me that's doing this for the first time unnecessarily handcuffing myself with a cheap tool was driving me nuts.
(Rant over)
https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=108721&d=1560290152