Re:mandrel or crush?
 

that makes no sense, if a mandrel bend isnt just right, you cut it just like you are doing with the whitey bends ;)

Re:mandrel or crush?
 

I mean the angle in which the bend is bent, not the general lenth of the bend.

The Whitely bend is infinatly adjustable, while the manural bends are stuck at 90, 120, etc and that's not too bad if you bought $500 worth of misc. bends and have them sitting around, but most of us don't wanna do that...

Re:mandrel or crush?
 

what im saying is that just like "whitey bends", you can cut a mandrel bend and change the angle of the bend, which to me is nicer and easier than making a straight pipe into a curve

Re:mandrel or crush?
 

pvc pipe from homedepot painted flat black. way cheaper and
won't absorb heat like the steel tubing. i just recomend using 1' steel tubing for the compressor, then a coupler and the pvc, just so the heat from the compressor won't warp it. i'd use jb weld on the joints, just a thin film on the joints.

Re:mandrel or crush?
 

As soon as I find my digital camera ( currently M.I.A. ) I'll show you a pic of my down pipe, and then you can tell me that you could of did the same thing with about 10 mandrel bends.. I guess you could, but id would cost a lot more, be a lot harder to built, and still have to be cut using angles, and honestly, I think its a good way to show off my welding skills, hehe...

Either way, we all agree that crush bends are about useless, hehe.

Re:mandrel or crush?
 

go for it....im not saying you wouldnt have to cut the mandrels on angles, but post it up anyway

Re:mandrel or crush?
 

I gotta fix my oil return line, so maybe I can take some pic of it off the car later.
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/maximu...bum?.dir=/49a9

I guess you'd need 1 110degree bend and one 25 degree bend and then one 80degree bend, hehe.... Which is my whole point, if you built it out of pre-bent piping, you wouldn't use the above bends, you's use 1 120degree, 1 30degree?, and 1 90degree which would all be more "bent" than they'd really have to be, but of course they'd work and prob. take a little less time and skill...

Re:mandrel or crush?
 

I'm going to go ahead and throw a wrench in all this nutswinging.
If you can get someone who really knows what they are doing with a crush bender i'd much rather have 1 piece crush bent piping than 10 or 15 butwelded mandrel bends spliced together. This is due to the ammount of penetration that will disrupt the flow more than a slight dome in your pipe will. if your crush bender sucks ass and all you get are wrinkles then hell yes, go for the mandrel always. there is also a question of cost, if it costs you more to have them crush bend you a piece than it does for you to buy mandrels and piece them together go whichever way is more cost effective.

if you dome out your piping a bit so that it slides over top of each other that will help your flow a lot as well, then you don't have to worry about big grapes ------- with your flow. you'll want the domed piece to be the recieving end of course.

Re:mandrel or crush?
 

The problem with crush bends isn't the ripples that it leaves... The problem is that if your using a 3'' pipe, and you "crush bend it", the spot that it was bent will not be 3'' anymore, it'll be like 2.75''. The air speeds up during the smaller parts of the piping, while the flow goes down, then the piping opens up again, which slows the air down, but icreases flow. anyway, after it speeds up and slows down about 20 times, the total flow is a fair amount. The ripples inside may cause a little turbulence, but that's not anywhere as important.

"Nutswinging" ??? Ghettoturbo and I see each other post on here a lot, we don't "nutswinging", we're just discussing are difference in thinking, hehe.

It the looks department, mandrel bends and a tig welder would be the best, but who the hell cares about looks?? This is HMT !!! not "Home Martha-Stewart turbo".

Re:mandrel or crush?
 

crush bends look like poo poo too.

IMO, hardly anything looks better than mandrel bent piping with all the welds ground flat.. looks like something you would buy for big bucks. plus you get the added benefit of smooth bends.