wishbone tubes
 

im gonna be cutting my wishbone tubes next week when the tube turns up, i was wondering the best way to cut them, by that i mean did you guys profile the tubes to fit around the tube it was welding to. if so how did, coz when i cut them on the saw they will have flat ends. does that make sense? :o

A good start might be to use a tube mitre program such as:

http://www.ozhpv.org.au/resources/shed/tubemiter.html

You input all of the tube details and it creates a pattern, which you print off, wrap around your tube and you then have a rough shape to work with.

thanks for the link, do you just use the template to mark the tube and then cut it out using a grinder etc

The tube mitre programs really help.

Even so, you will be grinding, fettling, grinding, fettling........

Sean

even with the tube mitre program its just a case of using the grinder and a file combined with a lot of mucking about. if i were to build another roadster i would definatly buy the pre done tubes from 3ge and just weld them up myself. brings the fabrication time down to hours rather than days

I am just profiling mine at the moment using my lathe,made up a rotory cutter mounted in the chuck,same diameter as the bush tube, made a jig to hold the arm tube and mounted to the cross slide, works a treat.Cheers Brendan.

Thats how we make all of our wishbones,profile cut with the lathe to the correct angles first time every time. Process goes from full lengths of steel to full set of finished wishbones in 3-4 hours.

i was going to do mine in the lathe but i was too tight to buy the cutting bits as the local machine shop wanted £50 for the two.

use holesaws. you just need to make a holder and they are cheaper than endmills. thats how we used to do the chrome-moly tube for karts

Do you mean mounting holesaws in the lathe?

Good idea, I had never thought of that.

You can get tube end notchers for just this sort of thing, but they cost wedge

Sean