bending pipe

[55chevy]

I'd really like to have the abilty to bend my own exhaust pipe or roll bar tubing..etc.. What works? How do all you guys do it?

I bought one of these things and tried it out.....


It was a P.O.S.. All it would do is crunch the pipe. I couldn't make a clean bend with one of these to save my life. So I took it back the next day. So what can I do besides buying pre-bent tubing or going through the hassle to take it to some shop and have it done for me?

[YENKO DEUCE REGISTRY]

Take it to a shop, or buy a Gardner System!

[mrrec]

Well, Ed, you bought a PIPE bender. It is for thick walled pipe. You want to bend tubing. Tubing is thin walled. The only good way to bend tubing is with a hydraulic tubing bender - like a muffler shop has. They are about $4000.00 or, if you want mandrel bends, about $9000.00.

You can buy various angles in various OD's and weld to straight lengths or you can heat your tubing and bend. You won't like the results of the latter at all.

I agree, go to a muffler shop that will work with you and make friends!

Dave

[55chevy]

Yeah... I figured.. I was just hoping there was a cheap manual bender out there that I didn't know about that did a decent job. I guess I'll be buying pre-bent mandrel pieces to hack and weld on...

[Jeff H]

Most of the exhaust shops around here that bend their own pipes end up crimping them. There's only 1 or 2 good shops that can make you a nice mandrel bent system. Mufflex built NJSteve's dual 3" system for his Charger and I think he said he picked up 25-50 hp from it. A lot of the trick customs buy the mandrel bends and weld them up instead of trying to find a shop that can bend it properly. I'm pretty sure that's the way Stielow does most of his exhaust systems.

[budnate]

Ed why not pick up a kit and slam it in???...I only had one guy I trusted to make a perfect system and he retired a few years ago..I have swung into a few shops and looked around and asked about rates and looked at there work..basically good for a farm truck and they were not inexpensive..they wanted top dollar for cruddy crimped work...on the other hand the bolt in systems are pretty nice mandrel bent and for the money down right cheap in comparison around here...except for the new pypes system I want..they said 450 for the kit prior to releasing it.. now its 6 bills plus shipping..may be me but thats to much dough for a cross flow and a x pipe system.

Bud.

[55chevy]

I did put Flowmasters pre-bent kit on a 74 Nova SS I had back in '95 and it went in great. But I'm putting side pipes on the Nova I have now and what I want to do is come out the side of the header collector to connect to the pipes and cap off the collector with caps and wing nuts so I can uncork it anytime I want.