Time for a tubing bender. I have been looking for a good tubing bender for a long time. Now I need one to make the engine and transmission mounts. As usual I have spent more time than I should researching and thinking about it than just doing it like a "normal" person does.
I have decided to use my tools make more tools (tool sex!) so I am going to make my own tubing bender using plans I purchased at www.gottrikes.com - I am building the HD version (Go Big or Go Home!)

Went out and bought $166.06 of steel - ouch that would have been $75 18 months ago.
Chop it up into little pieces. 2 hours or so to lay out and cut.
Deburr everything nice and smooth. Another hour or so.
Here is a few pictures. This is big thick tubing. 2X2X1/4 the flat stock is 3/4X2-3/4 cold rolled. I don't think this is going to flex much.

Did you know that the picture resizing tool mentioned in the FAQ works in "batch mode"? Just select the files you want to resize (ctrl + mouse click) and resize the whole lot at once - slick.

Now I need to make a bunch of big holes in thick steel. Check back in a few days.

I finally made some holes - I had to buy some tools. That's a magnetic drill press and an annular cutter. Took about 20 minutes to punch 24 7/8" diameter holes in the 1/4" steel tubing.

Started welding it together. Forgot one of the pins for alignement. Just an hour of cutting and grinding to start again. Oops.

One more time with more fixturing - Those are 12" long 7/8" bolts and some pipe for spacers along with the 7/8" hardened rod that will be used in the bender to hold the dies.
This thing is pretty big and heavy - at least 100 pounds. Those u-bends hanging out are 2-1/4" diameter. I know my benches are a disaster area. I'll clean them up soon.

I've almost got the bender finished and I find out they sent me the wrong dies! Arg.

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