I would hate to see the price tag on haveing someone do it for me as well. Let me know what you guys are doing. ThanksRoll Cage
Roll Cage
Is everyone building their own roll cages?? Or is there anyplace that sells them? I have the skill and know how just not a tubing bender
I would hate to see the price tag on haveing someone do it for me as well. Let me know what you guys are doing. Thanks
I would hate to see the price tag on haveing someone do it for me as well. Let me know what you guys are doing. ThanksI bought my bender from Pro-Tools and have bent up more then a few roll cages. http://www.pro-tools.com/
Jeremy, call Neil at Hawkeye buggies. I am sure he could bend the tubes for you and UPS them in "knockdown" form. He is VERY reasonable and does good work. He did my cage just from measurements I emailed him. Super guy! http://www.hawkeyebuggies.com/
The one i bought is just a cheap one from harbor freight (i know their stuff sux). But i thought i could at least get one cage out of it. I dont know what its worth by the time you pay for shipping. I paid $100 +tax. But anyways its a 12 ton with dies from 1/2"-2". I bent one tube with it just to get some measurments to start and it worked fine. If your interested email me elt13@sbcglobal.net. Shipping would be from 95361, you might want to get a cost on shipping, im guessing two boxes at 15-20lbs each. Thanks Dave
The one i have is a pipe bender. Are you from Cal.? I thought i saw that somwhere. If you not to far from Modesto thats where i had my cage done. The guys builds race cars. I took a bunch of pics in to show him what i was thinking, and he put a little bit of his own twist on it and i love it. He was also willing to tear it down make make any changes i wanted before he welded it. Im not sure how much experience you have with metal work, but i have quit a bit. Enough to know i didnt have the patients to build a cage. Bending pipe isnt the same as welding a couple peices a steel together. Just a heads up.
I never bent a piece of "tubing" before buying my bender. I read a little bit about bending tubing, online and gave it a shot. The red Berrien was my first attempt at bending roll cage and the yellow Desert Fox buggy was the 2nd roll cage I bent up. The second cage took about 2 hours. Using the proper techniques and the few tips I read, made it very easy. 
Doing it yourself is what it's all about. 
Doing it yourself is what it's all about. I am one of those guys that tries to do everything himself, but with all the other reponsibilities in my life, now I try to pick the things I am good at and enjoy and pay for the things that would just frustrate me, and probably have to be redone. I enjoyed building my buggy, but I enjoy driving it more. My rollcage needs to be redone, thats frustrating.
the HF pipe bender will work. I have one and it seams to work alright. I'm using 1 5/8 inch tubing with pits very well in the 1 1/2 pipe die but i can still only do 45 deg bends before the tubing will start to severely flatten. If you are going to be bending a lot of tubing somewhere down the road spent the extra 2-300 and get a cheap hydraulic tubing bender. When I have the spare money that's what I'm going to do. I really wish I had one. But for now the HF pipe bender will do. Another Idea is plan everything out to the T, cut all your tubing and then take it to a muffler shop while there not busy. If you catch them at the right time they sometimes will bend it all for free. Especially if you bring a box of donuts or something. That's probably what I'm going to do when I start building my cage for my baja. Happy Building! And make sure to post pictures of the progress!
This guy sells the plans for a Manx cage for 15 bucks. http://www.vdubn.com/dunebuggys/Manx/ro ... eindex.htm