MyE28.com

I consider myself savvy and always look for the cheapest place to get mandrel bends/tubing. Local shops will do standard bends for cheap but not mandrel. Here are some of my go to places but i would be curious to see what other options there are.

For straight mild steel tubing i order through oreilly's, you can get a 15ft stick of 3 inch shipped to your store for $35

For mandrels speedwaymotors or Columbia river mandrel, j bends are cheap on speedway
http://www.speedwaymotors.com/Combo-Exh ... 67444.html

for turbo manifolds, sch10/40 pipe elbow, i use mcmastercarr or ebay

for straight 304ss and aluminum tubing i check the scrap piles at metal yards

Some thoughts/additions on this as I did professionally for a period of time:

I'm not saying don't save money but sometimes stuff is cheaper for a reason.

I wouldn't use mild anything on my car personally, but that is just me. It certainly gets the job done at a low cost. Mild is generally easier to bend on a mandrel than 304 stainless so you'll find more "local" shops that are willing to bend custom tubing with mild steel.

I've never used speedway but I've seen some first hand work of Columbia river and I was not very impressed. Maybe their work can be great but the exhaust systems I ran across didn't impress me - the radius was not true through out the bend and began to "ovalize".

This becomes frustrating when fabricating exhaust systems and you'd like a "perfect" fit when connecting a cut on a bend to a straight sections. See below for an example from an old project of bends connecting to straight sections:



When sourcing mandrel bent tubing, I like to "run my hand around the bend" and see if the bend begins to lose it shape. If the circle begins to feel like a triangle in the middle, you might want to look elsewhere.


For weld'els on turbo manifolds I was always a big fan of the Vibrant Performance short radius 90's - I believe this is considerable cheaper than the same part on mcmaster:

http://vibrantperformance.com/catalog/i ... 8d10842a26




For high quality 304 SS bends, I've used these companies in the past with good results:

http://ptbtubebending.com/

http://www.verociousmotorsports.com/

http://vibrantperformance.com/catalog/index.php