Noob building light bar...
 

My weld sux. Basically I have to practice practice and practice. I tried to lay some bead and it gets old real fast. I figure if I tried to build/weld something non-structural that will give me some fun as well as some form of practice.

Inspire by the detour light bar, I figure I can build something similar. I started off with a 4 feet long breaker bar that is one inch diameter. With a hydroid bender I borrow, I bent the breaker bar.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7485/...02ca8c1c_c.jpg

It is very hard to get both bend parallel. I can’t think of the best way to do it. I just do it by guessimate. I think they are close enough. The other difficult thing is to cut the end.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7563/...c6d88d12_z.jpg

Cutting the tab with 1.25 square tube

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7480/...988d7aaa_z.jpg

Test fit the fog light. Those are halls 500 I got from evil bay

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7489/...28e7289c_z.jpg

I want the bar to tilt to the front a little bit. Its basically trial and error of cutting, measuring, grinding and repeat. Takes a while to get it work... All the pieces:

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7495/...55fc8df7_z.jpg

Line them up for weld

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8616/...46e284fd_z.jpg

My ****ty weld. It is much harder to weld small tube vs straight line. Especially the angle neck.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7521/...d135edc3_z.jpg

Test fit with the bracket and the light.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7532/...4a270cf7_z.jpg

At this point, I have to pause for a bit. I am expecting a baby very soon and I will leave this project for a while. Hopefully everything settle and I have some personal time to continue this.

If you cap one end of your tubing, hard pack it full of sand and cap the other end, it won't crush when you bend it.

When you mention it, I realized I read it somewhere on the interweb before! Of course, I totally forget about it when I bent the pipe. :hammer:

Anyways, I am able to find some time to finish up the light bar during the holidays even with a newborn.

Turn out its a bit too long. I don't want to cut the bumper cap so I cut the bar
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7519/...401b1a41_c.jpg

And connect it with a 1 inch tube
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8577/...b2e8808e_c.jpg

Finish product
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8650/...fb08057f_c.jpg

There's other tricks for using the Harbor Freight pipe bender (read "kinker") besides the aforementioned sand method. Putting a shop rag in between the tube/pipe and the shoes (rollers) helps a lot. Also putting the shoes on the furthest out location and pumping the handle slowly helps. These are quicker than the sand method, although using the sand tends usually to have better results.

Also, a good way to make the bends parallel is to keep track of the number of pumps and repeat on the other side.

Just a few things I've noticed while using the same "bender." YMMV