Bead Form Tool - The Bead Roller!
This is a great tool if you are making your own plumbing for your cooling system. This simple tool will put a professional bead around the end of a pipe to prevent the hoses from being pushed off due to pressure. While this is not an inexpensive tool, and unless you are running a shop it's more of a luxury to have. You can purchase the pipes from various racing houses for 10-15 bucks with the bead rolled into them, but the cost of the pipe is really about a dollar. So if you plan on doing a few cars and have friends that are doing cars this is a nice tool to have but expect to pay in the mid $400 range for this cool tool. Check them out online at www.beadform.com. The tool is simple to use, clamp in a vice, squirt some oil on the rollers put pipe between the rollers and tighten up the T-Bar, crank, repeat until nice bead is formed.
Bead Form as Delivered
The Bead Form tool comes in a nice plastic case and is made very well. This is a case of you get what you pay for.
Closer Look at Bead Form
The tool is pretty simple, you can either bench mount it or clamp it into a vise. I used it to make radiator hose connections on the GT40 and the Mustang
Closer Look at Bead Form
Simple to use, get some aluminum (or copper, or soft stainless) pipe, toss the Bead Form into a vice and get a bit of oil on the rollers, and off you go.
Beads Rolled
The finished product. Again, I could have spend 20 bucks on the pipes instead of 450 dollars on a machine but what fun would that be.
Also note that with a bit of scotch bright the pipe cleans up very nicely. Remember all the bead stuff is inside the hose.
GT40 Radiator Plumbing
These are a couple of shots pf where the pipes are being used. I was checking the lenght of the pipes before I rolled them. Note the paranoid double hose clamps I was thinking of using before I got the Bead Form. Being paranoid, I'll still use them...
Bead Form in a Vice
Just Clamp it in a vice and start rolling your bead.
Bead Form Rollers
It's pretty simple to see how this works. One trick is not to clamp too fast or too tight or you will convert you Bead Form into a Pipe cutter.
