More-months-than-I-care-to-think-about ago (about seven months I think), I bought a cheap Affordable Bender. When it arrived, I was less than impressed with the collar (see this post). So, I called them, only to learn that the collar was designed that way and should work fine (I believe they told me “Billions” of bends have been done with Affordable Benders, or something like that).

So, I decided to test the bender before sending it back; I hadn’t expected to wait 7 months to test it!

Yesterday, I mounted it to my metal work table and tested it with a 90 degree bend, one of two I need for the racer’s main loop (it’s the most difficult bend of the entire roll cage). The bender comes with a 90 degree die, so I was a little worried wether the bender would do a 90 degree bend.

First off, it didn’t take me long to miss my old bender, the one I built from plans: http://www.ewillys.com/2009/10/08/my-tube-bender-almost-done/. But, since I couldn’t access my plan (lock PDF with no password and the author of the PDF wouldn’t answer my emails), I had to buy this AFF bender.

Here are the results of the 90 degree bend .. as you can see, it stops short of a 90 degree bend:

Ugh .. what It meant is that I had to force the 15′ tube through the collar a few inches so I could add an additional bend. While that worked, I bent it too far (I misread my level .. it went to 90 degrees which I missed, then started down to 88, so I thought it was at 88 and needed to go to 90. UGH .. had to start over).

Eventually, I got the hang of how to do a 90 degree bend with this and managed to create the loop below.

This pic shows the first 90 finished and I’m starting on the second.

This shows the second 90 done. That is all the 90s I need, so the rest of the bends should be much easier.

I still have two more bends on this loop (the bars are parallel, though don’t look that way in the pics), which I’ll complete tomorrow.

I’ve spent parts of the last couple of days thinking through how/where the new cage will attach, how the floor should attach, and how the body should attach and where it should sit. For example, the body must be far enough forward so that the solid front clip can slip over the front of the radiator, but back far enough to sit in the right area in the back.

My initial intention was to bolt the cage fo the frame, but this frame (already cut and spread 5″) has enough mods that if I’m at a point that the cage has to be removed to make changes, I’m better off starting with a new frame (and, at this point, I don’t want to do a ground up rebuild).

Additionally, the body has warped some, so I will need to build a jig out of wood so that I can try to straighten the body some (apparently, using a heat gun, I should be able to remove some of the warping. What I can’t re-straighten, I will use fiberglass and/or some (probably) aluminum plates placed strategically to make it look straighter.

Here’s a couple pics of the body. You may not be able to tell, but both sides of the front of the body have flexed outward. So, between the heat gun, the jig, some interior plating, and the use of strategic mounts, I should be able to make it look a little less out of whack.

Over the next week we are supposed to have (finally) dry weather and temps that will be in the high 40s and low 50s, so I hope to get the cage built and, maybe, the body cleaned up to ready for some fiberglass repair and, eventually, some paint.

Though I dislike the neon green chassis, Ann has acquired a taste for it, so I might start with the body painted black, similar to the narrow body that was on it.