hey guys, i figured at least one of you have done this so i hope you can shed some light on this for me. i want to build my own roll cage, they sell benders on ebay like this one:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/16-TON-HYDRAULIC-PIPE-BENDER-W-6-3-DIES-ROLL-CAGE_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQcategoryZ63702QQitemZ4566343408QQrdZ1

now if i use 2 inch pipe with say 1/8 inch wall thickness would this do the job? is 2 inch with 1/8 wall thickness adequate for my sammi? will i be able to get at least 85 degrees out of this bender on 2 inch pipe without distortion in the corners? if yes, will packing sand be good enough to keep it looking good? anyone else done this please tell what were the hard parts you remember. any other tips in doing a cage? discuss!

i meant if no btw

I have one of those benders and built  the exocage on my toyota with it. I am also in the process of building bumpers for the sidekick with it. I think having it make clean 90 deg. bends depends on the quality of the pipe. I have not had any problems but a buddy of mine gets his pipe from a different place and it kinks past 75 deg.

Use 1.5" sch.40 it is around 1.9" OD and has .140 wall thickness.

You will get some deformation in the bends but it wasn't that bad.

heres a pic

pipe is for poop.

Go here: www.pirate4x4.com/forums and do a search for cage material.

I would personally never use pipe in my cages. I plan on using 1.5" HREW or DOM. Prolly DOM.

1 1/2" tubing with .120 wall thickness is what you will want to build a rollcage with. I used that on my exoskeleton and it works very well. Those benders your looking at will bend tubing but you will see where the dies bent the tube. Packing the tubing with sand wont stop the indenting of the tubing, you use sand for thin wall pipe to keep it from kinking over. Do you know anyone that has any kind of race cars? Some of these guys will have a good bender you maybe can rent.

Bill

my cage is made from pipe,it works just fine,it complys with MSA competition specs(UK)
the pipe is 48mm od.3mm wall for the rear loop and 40mm od with 4mm wall for the front end.
i have done bends to 90 with no kinking using a 12 ton hydralic pipebender.

OK, Im not saying pipe wont work... If you show up to any kind of U.S. racing event with a pipe rollbar/cage (NHRA,SCCA,Nascar, ect.) once they quit laughing at you they will politely tell you to take your vehicle home and dont bring it back. Professional sanctioning bodies insist on tubing for a reason.

Bill

are you sure about that? 

I know some allow pipe. Also we are not building a NASCAR or NHRA drag car! An exo cage is an ADD ON for protection of the body and to help protect yourself in a slow speed roll over.

Cage design is WAY mor eimportant that weither you use pipe or tube. I have seen some really crappy tube cages.

I remember reading a BIG thread about tube vs. pipe for an exo cage in the 'yota forum at Pirate, and it ended with the guy building an exo out of schedule 40 pipe, then flopping it on the side and posting the video. I also believe there were numbers in there that aimed to show that if you get high-quality pipe, it actually has a similar strength to HREW tubing.

And for all the people saying that NASCAR and various other racing organizations don't allow pipe, how often do you think that you're gonna take a roll at 200+mph in your kick?

Pipe's perfectly fine for a dedicated offroader (don't know if I'd use a pipe cage on the street) that's only going to see relatively low-speed flops/rolls.

quick ?   are the deformities " dents and stressed metal areas "  merely undisireable because of cosmetics? i would think that it would be a weak area and thus not reliable and not pretty !

yes the bends weakin the pipe. The  way the bow and arrow style pipe benders work is basically stretching the outside of the pipe and shrinking the inside of the bend. The outside gets thinner.

Like I said earlier though with proper gusseting and bracing the bends are not the critical part. Having another all the pipes come together at nodes and think triangles and you will have a fairly strong cage.

If you want to use High Quality pipe, how much of a difference is there going to be in price?
Also if you think every time you roll offroad is going to be an easy roll think again!! I just dont want to trust my safety to regular old pipe.

Bill

WEVE MADE 5 EXOCAGES . LOVE EM ITS BODY ARMOUR. DRAG IT ON THE ROCKS GET HOME TOUCH UP THE BLACK PAINT LOOKS LIKE NEW. 1 1/2 SCH 20 IS PERFECT.  IT BENDS NICE AND CLEAN. I RUN A STEEL FAB SHOP FOR A LIVING.  IF WE WANTED TO WE COULD BIULD ONE A WEEK. THERES ALWAYS SOMEBODY WANTING US TO MAKE THEM ONE.  BUT MY DAYS OFF ARE FOR WHEELIN.

ROSS

Ross,,, dude,,, take the caps off  . My ears are ringing from all the yelling  . 

Explosivo, PM me some links from pirate where that vids from. I went over there and read a bunch of posts in the general forum and almost everyone said to go with tubing. There were a few saying pipe was fine but alot of them said "for my safety" and "do it right the first time" kind of quotes.

Like I said Im not saying it wont work, but I dont want to hear of anyone at this site being hurt for any reason.

Bill

I'll agree that the slow speed rolls and setting things on there side the Piping is good enough. However if your dealing with any long climbs, areas with cliffs and altitude, I'ld say go for the tubing.  I've seen what would have been just a light roll turn really ugly and violent due to there being nothing under the vehicle to land on.   300 yards later and about 20-30 rolls and too much air time the buggy driver was real happy for not skimping on cage matirial.

Utah