I have an old truck with round tube bedrails that are rusted through. It is an old truck with 330,000 miles but paid for at least.
My idea was to copy the rusted ones using some 2 inch emt. How could I copy and make the end on the ends without a tubing bender and it look half way decent? My first idea was to bolt a large socket on a table and heat the pipt and bend it around that but there has got to be a better way out there.
Go to the conduit place and see if they have a bender you could borrow or rent.
Or miter the corners and weld it. Conduit welds OK, but you have to grind off the zinc so you don't get zinc fume. (you can weld through zinc, if you have a respirator or SCBA. ;-) )
If it were mine, I would not attempt to bend. I would cut the tubing at 45 degrees and braze the ends together. Then clean. primer and epoxy paint the things.
You could possibly put something like and old garage door spring inside the tube in the area of the bend and then make the bend. The spring should keep the tubing from collapsing. I have neve tried this, but seem to recall hearing of this method somewhere. Dave
degrees and braze the ends together. Then clean. primer and epoxy paint the things.
I'd simply buy some long sweeping "els" and weld them to the ends of the tubing, if I was using EMT, but I'd be much more likely to find some old dairy tubing (stainless steel milker pipe) and a few bends and "do it right".
degrees and braze the ends together. Then clean. primer and epoxy paint the things.
Another good way to do it is to find some "T" fittings to slide pipe through, and use pipe stubs down to the "rack pockets". Lots of fence and gate fittings at the local TSC, orchard supply, building center, or what-have-you - along with the galvanized pipe to do the job.
My other option is to wait 'till my buddy is pulling some bends for the custom exhaust work he does and have him mandrel bend a piece to fit - but we don't all have friends with mandrel benders!!!
IF IT WAS ME, I'd go to a muffler shop and pay the guy to make what I wanted. Those guys do it all day every day, and it will look professional. OR, I'd just bite the bullet and buy a tubing bender, as once you do this, it will probably segway into many other tube bending projects. I can think of a dozen things right now that I could use a tube bender on to build, and unless you get a really top of the line one, you can get a decent one reasonable. Cheaper for used. That machine bent stuff comes out looking soooooooooooo sweet. Learning curve may be a little expensive, but unless it has to be exact, you can do a lot of splicing.
And you can finish that stuff from the muffler shop and have it chromed or powdercoated, and it will look like a million.
SteveB
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