Harbor Freight pipe bender modified for bending tube

I don't know how many of you bend your own tubing here and if you do you've probably got the right tools for the job. Alot of people use the Harbor Freight pipe bender cuz it's cheap, but its made for pipe, not tube. I modified mine to make bending dom easier and better.Here's how I did it...


First of all mounting it to an engine stand makes everything happier.



The problem I had with the bender is of course the die's are made for pipe, not tube, so they are the wrong size. I ground out the 3/4 die for 1 1/8" tubing. Now it fits pretty well. I also drilled a hole in the side of the die to mount a clamp that I made that keeps the tubing pressed hard into the bottom of the die as I've read that one reason it will kink the tube is it rises up out of the center of the die. Whether this is true or not I don't know but the clamp makes it alot easier to use because it holds the tube while you run the jack up.







I also replaced the rollers with a piece of pipe that has a large piece of pipe split in half welded to it. This creates a large contact slider for the tube to be pressed into preventing any kinking there.





And the final product.





Here are some bends I've made with it since the mods.

Nice! What's the wall size you' re working with? Have you try thinner? Exhaust tubing?

I've only used this bender for 1 1/8" and 1 1/4" .120 wall DOM. I have tried bending pipe and emt in it and it just don't work. Kinks really bad. I don't know exhaust tubing would do? Be awesome if it'd bend it tho...

Very nice mods, makes an average bender better. Let us know if you can bend tubing for tail sections for tracker seat bases. I dont know if I worded that righr or not but I think you know what I mean.

Thanks,
Bryan

This might help:

http://www.xs650chopper.com/2009/11/bending-tube-the-cheap-way/

bt24 said:

Very nice mods, makes an average bender better. Let us know if you can bend tubing for tail sections for tracker seat bases. I dont know if I worded that righr or not but I think you know what I mean.

Thanks,
Bryan

Click to expand...

I think you could probably do a seat hoop but it wouldn't be painless. Because of the nature of the bender it will only do 90 degrees so you would have to do it in two pieces.

Fill the pipe with sand when you bend and it will keep kinking to a minimium. Take a look over on pirate4x4 and you can find a bunch of mods for these, although most guys are running a jd2 or pro tools.

FrkyMnky said:

Fill the pipe with sand when you bend and it will keep kinking to a minimium. Take a look over on pirate4x4 and you can find a bunch of mods for these, although most guys are running a jd2 or pro tools.

Click to expand...

This is why I did these mods. No sand, yet kink free bends. With the mods it doesn't kink at all. Sand packing is a pita...