Harbor Freight Piping Notcher

Most of the frame will be 1" or 1.5" square tubing, but since the engine bay will be open I wanted round tubing... mainly for aesthetics.  I bought this piping notcher for $40 at Harbor freight and have been very satisfied.  There are a lot of reviews saying this tool is terrible, and yes, it needs some help out of the box, but its less than a third of the cost of the next cheapest notcher I could find online.

You can see here I use a digital level to hold the pipe in the frame in the car, then I can translate that directly to the notcher without having to make a complex mark on thee pipe.  The one mark that is important is a center line down thee tube so the tube rotation is always the same.

If you buy this notcher, you will need to add 3 washers between the the U shaped slot in thee main body and the tube clamp assembly.  This helps center up the drill bit in your cuts.  Do a search on this for several videos on setting up this notcher to perform better.

As you can see , I'm getting excellent notches at compound angles with very little effort.  The rule of thumb for fitment should be that the gap between two tubes is no larger than the diameter of welding wire your using (assuming your MIG welding).  A tight joint means easy, clean, strong welds!