Coilovers for the rear are ordered!!!! they shipped today so if all goes well the whole cutting my truck in half thing should occur next weekend. The new rear frame section is at my job. They have a far superior welder, so I have taken full advantage of it. i Had pics on my smartphone, but I fell out of my uniform shirt pocket a few too many times and will no longer turn on. I do, however, have this picture i took at home of the new rear fuel tank mounting bracket.
That was made out of some pre-bent tube I had accumulated. I cut, welded, and sleeved it to shape it that way. Then I made the Sheet metal insert by using knockout punches to make the holes and then hammered the flanges in with the rivet gun over a cup washer for mounting hood mirrors on semi-trucks. The way that mount works may not make sense right now, but I am gonna finish the tank mount setup tomorrow and if I remember to bring the camera it will make sense.
Also, After a ton on online research, I bought the Harbor Freight Pipe Bender. If you look at the reviews, its full of people bitching about how it wont do tubing and it kinks the hell out of it. That is somewhat true. Pipe is sized different so the dies dont fit tubing. but its a incredibly simple problem to fix. I read a lot about how the problems of it kinking tubing came from the center of the bend wanting to lift out of the die. So the common solution was to build some sort of hold down clamp for the center of the tube being bent. Another solution was to grind out the dies so that they fit the tube better, or weld up the dies that were slightly larger and grind them to fit.
I tried both and I can say from my experience the hold down clamp serves no purposes whatsoever. and grinding and welding to make the dies perfect is extremely time consuming. So after fucking up a bunch a sections of tube, i came up with a solution.
the biggest problem is for the most part the dies are too large for tubing sizes. you can maybe see the gaps on the sides of the tube in the pic.
Or not, when I look at it I cant really see it either, but trust me... lol. Think about an aluminum can. if you push the side of of it with your thumb, it will create an indention. But it does so by creating kinks and creases. Its the same principle with this bender, if you allow the tube to expand laterally, it is gonna kink. The simplest remedy for the problem with these dies is soft sheet metal. copper, aluminum whatever
heres a peice of copper I used to bend 1-1/4"tubing. it compresses and fills the voids and makes a pretty damn good bend.
Heres a peice of 7/8" diameter 1/8" wall tube with a couple of bends. this was way too small for the dies that came with the bender, But I stacked two flat peices of aluminum in there and it makes some damn nice bends, with almost no distortion at all.
I am still somewhat skeptical whether it could do a clean 90degree bend or not, but 90's arent that important when it comes to chassis work.
for a hundred bucks this thing is really a great tool as long as you know it wont work for tubing straight out of the box. But its a cheap and easy problem to solve and if you are poor like me this setup is incredible.
Also, I am drunk. so..... If i misstated, misspelled, or just didnt make any sense, thats probably why.
. Ive just been really busy professionally and personally and it has gotten crazy fucking cold here. 
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