I can get a 16 ton pipe bender that can bend up to 3" tubing locally for about $175.

Was wondering making my own bends might be the way to go instead of buying bends and welding pieces together.

But these wouldn't be mandrel bends...

 

not worth the hassle.... many of the vendors on this site offer manderl bends, and it's much easier just getting them and weldin em together....


just my opinion

 

mandrels look alot nicer for one and when you use the bender your looking at which crimp bends it instead od say 2 1/2'' it crimps it to like 2 1/4''

 

That is an interesting question has anyone actually dynoed a car with a standard bent piping versus mandrel bent piping??? horsepower wise what is mandrel worth... I gotta agree dealing with some of these people is absolutely ridiculous. Why couldn't a person just take the pipe and make the bends more gradual and then bisect the angle at say 45* and then do another bend the same way then weld them together... that way you would have a 90* bend which is often the most severe bend you would encounter anyways...just a thought... I know it would use more pipe but I have a friend that owns an exhaust shop and he would let me have the run of the place after hours and I could get rid of a lot of headache real fast.
so does anyone have numbers???
brandon

 

i used mandrel bends on my headers, and cold side up to the carb. But i used crush bends (3") for the downpipes and exhaust. I think if your building an all out drag car where every last bit of hp is required i'd build it with mandrel, if its a street car and its not that important to you use crush bends. I have way more power than i can use in my Pinto....so i cheaped out and did the exhaust with crush bends.

#ad

 

I really wish someone would build a kit like this just or the hell of it. A while back a member was making his cold side out of PVC and seemed to to ok as well. I want to see a low down dirty build, cutting every corner possible and see what happens.

 

if i could go back i would do it. It sure doesn't take long to spend big $$ on mandrel bends (in Canada anyhow) i needed two 3" 90 degree bends in a hurry so i went to the local truck exhaust shop and spent $104 on two freakin bends! The rest i ordered from Racing Solutions and got 6 bends (3") and 6 2" bends for $150 shipped!

 

hell ya---

www.racingsolutions.com

awesome customer service too

 

I can't imagine you got too good of customer service with the wrong site. Haha.

Anyways, there site is www.racepartsolutions.com

 

those are two different companies

racing solutions is a sponsor here---and their mandrel bent pipe is like half the price of RPS. Darrin said he just cant compete with those guys---I think they mandrel bend their own pipe.

RPS is an awesome company too.

 

Just be warned, 99% of PIPE benders can NOT bend thin wall tubing. You can bend it a couple degrees, and then it will kink right up, and just crush the tubing in on itself, much worse than even a non-mandrel exhaust bender can do.

 

The link still doesnt go anywhere.

Jess

 

My

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That should work to racing solutions. They can also be found in the sponsor section under

turbotech forums

where do I find X Y Z part....

 

here it is

http://store.racing-solutions.org/

 

Mine pretty close. I don't have a mandrel bend on my car (maybe in the catback). Heck, some of my bends are made from cutting multiple peices of pipe at angles and welding them together. I'm sure I'm losing alittle power, but not enough to matter with a stock block. If I remember right, Brian Sharer was using crimp bent piping in his fairmont when he went ~9.8 at 138 with stock block and jy t3's.


Troy

 

a couple yrs ago, a turbo people employee/associate made himself a turbo kit using a bender @ a muffler shop, car went 8's (like most DR cars)

The reason i would just buy bends is because most cheap benders cant bend tight radius, i'm an electrician, and have access to a hydraulic bender, buy the 2 1/2 bends are like 2' long, and not really usefull in a car

 

Oh my bad. I guess I just jumped to conclusion since your link lead no where. But hey, thanks for the site. I'm going to be ordering some tubing here sometime soon. They have pretty good prices.

 

Ive seen cars with PVC Cold sides, even with that tube RV use to drain waste and it works perfectly fine.

Personally im going to do my short bit of hot side with Weld El's and Schedule 40 black pipe. Haven't decided on the cold side yet

 

Provided the exhaust isn't crazy undersized with lots of severe bends, you will not see much difference. If it is smaller than it should be, and crush bent, then it will hurt more.

 

My old 306 Twin T3 set up was ALL crush bent.. Hot and Cold side. Car went 10.92 @123 on dr's on 14psi with no intercooler. I had a friend at an exhaust shop do the whole thing. If you are looking to get EVERY ounce of HP out of a kit it might matter, but hell just turn the boost up 1lb to make up for the difference I used mandrel bends this time around, my friend built the whole thing from scratch.


Jeremy