CorvetteBob wrote:
Please forgive my lack of welding skills.
After these were taken, I discovered that the mandrel bent tubing from Jegs was stretched thin on the outer radii of the tube sections. It went from .06-.070 down to as little as .028 wall thickness. In order to get some life out of this system, I needed to increase the wall thickness on the outer radii of the curves. I looked into spray-welding, but it was quite cost prohibitive. Just adding a second layer over the top wouldn't help much either. So I had to add metal with the welder, grind, add more, grind more, etc, etc...
I've seen other mandrel bent tubing that did not lose thickness so dramatically, but I think this tube did because it was such a tight radius of 3" on the centerline of the tube.