Harbor Freight Tubing Roller

Has anyone used this: http://www.harborfreight.com/tubing-roller-99736.html

to build a cage? If it works, it will about pay for itself on the first cage I build with it, but don't want to buy a piece of junk. I want to build a chumpcar cage for an E30 of 1.5X.095 DOM with it. Nothing super complicated, and I can design it such that all the bends are in the same plane for each part.

I've attempted using this POS before: http://www.harborfreight.com/16-ton-hydraulic-pipe-bender-35336.html and pretty much all it does is kink thin-ish wall tubes unless you're super careful with it or even go so far as to fill tubes with sand (what a mess).

Just get one of these.

LowBuck Tubing Bender

Rollers typically only do larger radius bends. the lowbuck one could be a good option, or Eastwood makes a similar one. I have never used either.

If you don't want to step-up to the full JD2 bender, just get the one from Eastwood for 440$.

If you are sure to never need another size die, you could get the Speedway version, with the nicer quality single die.

As pushrod36 mentioned, the tubing roller is for large radius bends with a lot of bending (more than 90 degrees) because you need to roll the tube back and forth.

And the HF thing is a pipe bender and only useful on really thick (more than 0.125 wall) pipes. Useless for cage work. I know someone will come along saying that they have no problem building their cage with those, but I have never seen one in the flesh, and they I have never ever had good results with mine.

jpnovak wrote: Just get one of these. LowBuck Tubing Bender

I'll second this one. I've done 3 cages with mine. Simple and it works. Not super fast, but I was able to duplicate bends perfectly.

For cages the roller is the wrong tool. Any mandrel bender will make nicer bends and be easier to use.

I bought the HF roller, found it wasn't the right tool, built a Got Trikes bender, and haven't looked back.

Unless you plan on doing multiple cages to pay for the price of a (good) bender, it'll be cheaper to just buy the pre-bent bars: http://www.rollcagecomponents.com/chump-car-roll-cage-kit-1-3-4-x-120-dom/

That's what we have in our 24HoL E30 which we welded in.

I have a HF roller, but you are limited to the few dies.

I built my own bender with MechWerks plans and Pro-tools dies. Works so so, for me. The actual bends look beautiful. Its a pain to get cumbersome bent tubes set perfectly for the next bend, but I am getting better with each cage. http://www.mechwerks.com/Mechwerks_plans_drawings.htm

anyone got a suggestion for an exhaust tubing bender?