Bending copper/nickle 3/8" fuel line

I have had luck with filling both with sand and salt for bending, the salt seems to pack much tighter (smaller grain). Just don't blow the salt out over your HF bandsaw:( what a mess that was to clean up--still lots of rust.
 
extropic said:
Ridgid 606 Heavy-Duty Instrument Bender for 3/8" Stainless Steel and Hard Tubing.

Shop for best price.

www.toolup.com

Ridgid 606 Heavy-Duty Instrument Bender for 3/8" Stainless Steel and Hard Tubing

The Ridgid 38043 is a two-stage design tube bender that allows bends from 90 degrees to 180 degrees without ever cross handles; lock/unlock with a half-turn rotation of the bending handle.
www.toolup.com www.toolup.com

Swagelok has the same style. They work great. They have two rollers that contact the tube in a way that doesn't crush the tube.

Alternatively, Cerra-Bend is a low temperature melting alloy. You could fill the area with cuttings and melt with a heat gun. Does not wet to the inside of the tube, just fills it. I've used it in short assemblies I could submerge in boiling water to melt it out. Dangerous to pour molten into a small tube. May spit back, like filling a hot radiator. Wear a face mask and other appropriate PPE.
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Yes, good excuse to get another tool;)
 
I had to bend some stainless brake line to install a trans cooler in my Tundra. I have a Howron Mighty Mite bender that uses Delrin dies to cold bend tubing to pretty much any angle without any distortion of the line.

This is the bender I own. Scroll down to see the dies. The video shows how the dies work at about the 2:00 mark.

If you already have a bender then you can easily make form tool to cut the grooves in some Delrin. If not, Howron benders are pretty okay to own, too.
 
Before you give up on the mandrel bender , try a little grease On the outside where your bending . I use white lube in a tub but regular chassis grease show work just as well . I’ll also dab a little lube while flaring brake lines then washing it with brake clean
 
I like buying new tools, but it's hard to spend well over $100 to bend 3 fuel lines. I'll try some grease. The piece I'm working on is too short now so it's become a test piece. Thankfully I have extra line.

I can fill these two small lines with water and freeze them, but the line from the filter to the engine is going to be 8ft long. I don't have any way to freeze that. I also can't imagine trying to fill that long of a line with sand.

The new tubing bender I ordered should be in on Monday. Hopefully that will solve the problem.

I didn't think this would be such a big problem. The fuel tank I bought came with 15ft of rubber line. There is no way I'll run rubber all the way to the front of the car.
 
Having many years running water pressure lines (in pairs to measure flow) I have never had trouble with the bender in the second picture. The tubing was 1/4" OD stainless steel, with a wall thickness of 1/32". There were times that a lubricant would have helped (I think) but was never actually used. I still have such a bender, somewhere in the deep dark corners of my shop.

Cleaning out existing tubes was a bear, but that's a different process with a different tool. I haven't done that job for gittin' on to 20 years, but it was simple once the angles were known. Just like bending conduit but smaller. Conduit is measured by ID, tubing by OD. The end result being a ratio of almost 3:1 for diameter.

The only stipulation is to have a couple inches extra on the end. Once bent, the excess is cut off. There is some small amount of flattening, but it isn't so much as to cause a serious reduction in flow. Our use was for pressure transmission rather than flow, so a reduction in area was no big deal. However, cleaning the lines would be a problem. The ID was around 3/16" and we used a speedometer repair kit (~1/8") as a cleaner. The speedo cable would pass through bends with no problems except containment of the part that wasn't inside a tube.

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I haven't used the 3/8 line, but the copper nickle brake line I've used is very free bending, even by hand. Sure the tubing you have is the right stuff? Mike
 
FOMOGO said:
I haven't used the 3/8 line, but the copper nickle brake line I've used is very free bending, even by hand. Sure the tubing you have is the right stuff? Mike
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I agree, that was my very first thought. Cu-Ni is supposed to be a strong but workable alternative to stainless. It work hardens, but not fast enough to cause problems in a single bend.
 
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