ab102 1-1/4" Hydraulic Tube Bender

Perfect bends right out of the box. Couldn't be happier.

It arrived with a really shotty paint job. Pretty sure it was still wet when boxed up because it smelled like paint, it was sticky, and a ton of it was peeled off the from moving around in the box. Almost wish it just came bare because to fix it I need to strip off the crap paint to re-paint it. Anyways, other than that the bender works well. It bends .120 wall (welded seam) tube with no problem. No kinks. Getting tube in and out of the bender requires some persuasion and the locking mechanism is tedious because it requires 2 wrenches to lock the tube in place. It's a great budget bender, especially if you are working on a project that has a fixed tube size. The price allows you to get your feet wet with little investment. I will likely mod the locking mechanism- it works- but it is a time sucker and sort of a pain to feed the tube through.

Suitable for roll bars and larger work. Not so much for precision work. Can introduce rotational errors (twisting of tube) under some conditions.

It broke the first bend i tried . It actually sheared one of the small pins and it flew off and hurt my hand pretty bad . This thing is a death trap with shrapnel just waiting to fly off and hurt someone .