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Has anyone ever remade one of the control levers for one of these rigs?
I need a left one for the 97 6x6 I have, and of coarse it's discontinued and not listed for sale anywhere... If I needed the right I could order one, but nooooo I need the left lol
The current one on the rig is bent to the point where it's about to brake off due to metal fatigue down at the pivot point. Long story short, the controls rusted up, someone tried WAY to hard to try to move them, and in the process bent the stick...
I don't own a tubing bender, so I was thinking about removing both control arms and taking them to a local machine shop to see if they could make a new left one to match/mirror the bends of the right one that's still in good shape. I have no problem welding the tubing together myself, I just don't have a way to create the shape of the control arm itself...
I'm making my own for a hustler bigfoot, and my wife wants the sticks for her 960 remade to be in the middle. I'm just getting some 7/8" tube and will either cut and weld or try my pipe bender with a modified die to get the bends I want. I'm still undecided on making them straight or have 90s at the top like the one in your picture.
Just to update this old thread. After trying a few local machine and fab shops, it seems that no one wanted to take my money and build them for me... So fine, I bought some left over tubing from a local metal shop for like $7, and today I got around to starting to make them my dang self!
The tubing I picked up is a little thicker wall than the original bars too, so maybe it'll be a little more resistant to bending.
Here's what the left stick looked like down at the pivot point. Bent back and forth a few times, on the verge of breaking...
The right was starting to bend too, but not nearly as bad.
I had tried to make the sharp 90 bends at the top, but my bender (technically a pipe bender, so that's probably my issue) just kinked the tubing after about 60 degrees. So instead I just cut the tubing at a 45 degree angle, butted the new upright pieces up to the new grip part of the bar, and welded them together at a hard 90 degree. After a little grinding on the welds to clean them up, they came out okay for using just a cheap flux core mig
I was able to make the subtle bends in the uprights with the pipe bender at least, so they do match the shape of the originals in that since pretty well.
The next step is to hack off the pivot points at the bottom of the originals, line them up, and weld them to the new arms, hopefully keeping them clocked in the right spot lol. Then it's just prepping, painting, and installing!
Yeah I tried to make the bend so it matched the originals, but I just couldn't get it to go far enough without just kinking and folder over... Apparently there's a big difference between a "tube" bender and a "pipe" bender... who knew, lol. I'm hoping that once it's all done, painted up, and installed, only the keen eyed will be able to point them out as not being original
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