I have been working on my cage and this is the tube bender I am using. There is a big difference between a pipe bender and a tube bender. A pipe bender is the type that looks partly like a press and uses a die on a jack to bend the pipe up in the middle. This will not work for roll cages.
A tube bender grabs the tube and pulls it around a die with a guideing/supporting shoe.
This unit runs on a combination of shop air and hydraulic pressure. The shop air plugs into the hydraulic pack and uses it to produce 10,000 psi of hydraulic pressure. That is the yellow pack to the left.
The orange cylinder applies the pressure to the die. Each pipe size requires it own die and supporting shoe.

This is another shot with the pipe being pulled around the die.


This is the roll bar bolted in after welding for a test fit before adding the back bracing.


This is a homemade belt sander and 14 inch vertical disk. While not needed it really makes deburring and flattening cut edges easy



If anyone is interest I would start a post teaching others how to accurately use a tube bender. I expect and get 1/16 and better accuracy but you have to know your particular tube bender.
Anyone interested? I would start another post on how to learn your tube bender and some tips on how to make a better cage.

This cage is just for show so don't bug me on the pro's/cons of welding it in permanently.

 

Forgot about the cut off saw. I really thought this was a cheap one at about $250 roughly but after using it alot as both a band saw in the upright position and as a normal cut off saw I am really impressed with it's performance.
I have 2 of them plus a shop saw and find this one is really the best for me.

 

You've got some pretty cool tools Norval

 

Thanks. One of the hardest part is the notches. It can be done b y hand with a grinder but I cheated a brought a couple of tubes into work today and put them in the professional notcher. Less then 30 seconds and you have perfect notches. You dial in the angle of the pipe, the diameter and it cuts them perfectly in 30 seconds. To get the angle I hold the pipe in place with a magnetic protrator, read off the angle and dial this into the machine.
I would love one at home but it was $12,000. I will use the mill but setting up the pipe on say a 18 degree angle becomes a real problem. I would have to build a special vice/holder. I do have a 1 1/2 inch cutter so straight pipes are no problem.
This is just a short cut for notching and agian a grinder and little work works fine. The last 3 cages I built were only with the hand grinder.
I am getting lazy in my old age and after all this is the VET.

 

Looking good! I've been looking for that exact type of tubing bender but here they only sell those junky pipe benders that is a hydraulic ram that wrinkles the tubes as it bends in the middle and not following the arch.

 

Thanks Twin Turbo. Do NOT use that junky pipe bender. If the tube is heavy enough it will bend ok/fair but it is not accurate.
With this bender if you want a 42 1/2 inch tube with 20 inch legs you can do it. I mean right to 42 1/2, not a 1/16 out IF you know your bender and do a little homework at the start.
For example I know my tube bender takes 3 7/8th out of the length and gives me 9 1/2 inches bend down every time so I just add these figures to the dimensions.

 

This picture is actually two years old. The reason I know that is because the right half shaft is off the car and on it's way to a local land fill.

Norval this is where my rearmost roll bar is welded in. It leaves a rear crush area in case of an accident. Becasue if you have the bars clear out to the end in the even of a wreck if you tweek the frame and bars it becomes a total throw away item.

This is the VB&P aluminum two inch adapter. It's the only way i could install 11X17 rear wheels with 6.5 inch back spacing. I have great faith in them. Out on the road racing track or driving 200 mph out at Bonneville Salt Flats. Other things are the rear sway bar box tubing spacer so when weight is on the car it make the sway bar nearly level with the ground. The muffler is a 3 inch in and out Stainless packed box race muffler. You can actually see through it. The calipers and rotors have again been since replaced. This is a race car not a show car!

 

George, did you weld the round tube straight to the frame? When I'm going to weld in my cage (damn thing still hasn't been shipped ) I'm going to weld a flat plate on that area and weld the round tube to that to spread the load, positioning that tube over the suspension is the perfect place, there's no use in welding bars further back than the suspension as it does nothing for suspension stability and frame flex, yet as you say only takes away from the crumple zone.

 

One other thing, why do you have heatshielding around the lower shock mount? Or is that some kind of brake ducting?

 

That Twin Turbo is whats left of the rotor/dust cover on that side. You can see that it's had a cutting torch removing part of it. I went off a race track sideways at high speed and it flipped gravel in between the inner wheel and Caliper. When I came back on the track still going about 70 and way out of control. Actually I couldn't figure out why i had such directional control problems. The caliper had been ripped off the trailing arm and wedged the rear wheel locked.


This is what the bars look like from above before painting.

 

When welding to the top of the frame it is almost impossible to get 360 degree welds. To get at the inside too much of the fiberglass flooring needs to be cut out. I agree with Twin Turbo that a plate should be used to spread the load.
I installed my roll bar just in front of the shock/coilover mount to strengthen this area along with a further rear mount to help stabalize the frame in my case for the coilovers.
By having a roll cage mount almost on top and one further back this area is supported.
I also try to do all welding on the side for better quality.
Marck that sucks that the cage is not yet shipped. ON a slow boat it will be summer before it arrives.
This is again my stand offs that pass through the floor with most welding on the side.
If you look at the bottom left corner of the mount you will see the plate on the side of the frame that holds the coilover upper mount. All forces from the coilovers pass almost directly straight up to the roll bar.

 

George your cage is made out of mild steel tubing which is most common and not quite as pricy.
DOM tubing looks like a gun barrel inside and out. It has a blue gun metal finish and no weld seams are visible inside or out.
It is also alot harder to bend and between $4 and $5 per foot so mistakes are costly.
I also used .094 because that is all that nascar requires for their cages in DOM tubing.

 

Norval, I know the guydoing the shipping and hopefully he'll pick it up next week or so, I hope he doesn't postpone his trip to AZ this time. It should be here within 4-6 weeks once it's loaded.

I was wondering, you are going to bolt in your cage, but how are you going to be able to remove it when you weld the roof hoop, the a pillar bars and the rear bars onto it? You can not unbolt it and remove it through the roof or door opening, are you going to bolt in the roof hoop or something?

George, I didn't mean the rock shield but the thing behind it but it's just the shock, somehow I thought it looked like that aluminium heat shielding stuff but it's just dirt & grime LOL

 

I was wondering, you are going to bolt in your cage, but how are you going to be able to remove it when you weld the roof hoop, the a pillar bars and the rear bars onto it? You can not unbolt it and remove it through the roof or door opening, are you going to bolt in the roof hoop or something?

Varies sections will be flanged together. I will bend the tubing, slide two precision flanges over the pipe , space them slight apart with washers and after welding cut them apart to create sections that can be unbolted.
The tubes passing throught the firewall will also be flanged to allow the main frame to come out.
I work tube by tube, I have all winter and I try to keep as many tubes as possible welded together but there will be sections that need to be unboltable.

 

Norval when are you moving out west? It's either that or me driving 3500 miles to your place and take a couple of weeks off work to do the steering and rear spindles. I'm back in enough money again now to do some serious fixing and repairs to my poor old Vette i'm about tired of looking at my 427 ci SBC in the plastic wrap.

 

That looks really good
really nice garage also.
one other thing is that your cd player under the back window?
never seen anyone having it there!

 

keep pic's coming

 

Where is the angle gauge on that tubing bender? Do you have to measure it manually? Our tubing bender at work looks similar but is manually operated. It is mounted off the ground on a pole and uses a ~3 foot piece of tube to provide leverage, plus it has a sort of ratcheting mechanism. So about 5* bend per 90* pull. I used it for the first time the other day to create a cage for a Miata based on bend numbers from a previous car. My coworker who does all the cages uses this, a cutoff saw, and a drillpress with a hole-saw to create all the cages he does. He does very good work, but we could use some better equipment!

-Chris

 

I would love to live where you live. The pictures you sent me gets me thinking about all that nice riding country.
Spend some of that money on the whipple supercharger and put it on the 427. Get some real power. Not belittling what you have now but put 12 pounds of boost in the 427 and you will never get rid of the grin.

 

I gutted the stock radio leaving the dials and the light but other then that is just fills the hole. The stereo is out of the way and with the remote I have no problems changing channels or volumn.. It was simple and with all the speakers under the rear deck the wiring was simple.