Kirkham Skunk Works

[Venamm]

I would say a world class introduction "Kirkham Super Car" to kick the snot out of the Mclarens, Ferrari's, Buggati's....etc....

[1ntCobra]

Originally Posted by 1ntCobra

Maybe an aluminum frame?

http://www.clubcobra.com/forums/all-...es-anyone.html

Well if I took more than one guess...

[csx700?]

tom
you are correct !

[Don]

David, another use for the chassis, either a C or D ( no tail fin ) Type Jaguar w/ LHD. Might just start a new demand for a replica as there would be a sufficient supply of the dual OHC 6 cyl, or the V-12

[Tony Ripepi]

Hi Guys,

A couple of (Marketing/Sales) thoughts for the Kirkhams....stay with what works Cobras Slabside, FIA and 427 body styles, independant under pinnings. The Daytona Coupe is work of art and there is a market for them....the only other alternative for the same format is $300,000.00...that makes your price point look really good, for somebody that wants a coupe in Aluminum.

Work a deal with a fiberglass company to produce a body for your chassis that would give you a lower cost of entry for a wider market....possibly with Aluminum hoods/doors/ trunks that would lend the replica the look and feel of an original and all of the bits/pieces/billets in the suspension/chassis that makes your cars the great drivers they are.

One man's opinions,

Tony R.

[David Kirkham]

Gents,

Here are the photos I promised you. It has been a job trying to catch up here at the shop.

Here is a picture of Peter Brock. He gave a GREAT speech on the history of the Daytona Coupes and the Shelby era in general. I wish you could have all heard it!

[David Kirkham]

Here is an overall view of the billet chassis. You can see the vertical parts of the chassis now coming to life--like the door hinge pillars and the cowl supports for the windshield. You are looking at the car from the right front corner towards the rear of the chassis.

[David Kirkham]

Here is another view more directly head on to the chassis.

[David Kirkham]

In this shot you can see the cowl supports going up behind the dash. The cowl supports will take the load of the stressed tunnel and feed them into the foot boxes.

Also, you very clearly see the door hinge pillars in this photo. The plates the door hinges pillars mount to are hidden under the doors. That is one of the big secrets for the incredible stiffness of the chassis.

The rear bulkhead is also very clear in this photo. The rear bulkhead forms the back of the cockpit and takes all the loads from the wheels and the differential and feeds them into the tunnel and down along the sides of the chassis under the door sills.

[David Kirkham]

Here is a shot of the front right suspension corner. Notice the hubs are shaped like a "tulip." At least that is what we call it. The outer diameter of the hub will be used to drive the rotor hats. That way there is a thermal disconnect between the rotor and the bearings. Also, the rotors will now run perfectly true as they are no longer dependent on their "trueness" by being attached to the hub or the wheel. Any machining tolerances will thus be eliminated and the dreaded break shudder is now a thing of the past.

Also, notice BOTH the upper and lower ball joints are loaded in double shear. This was done for safety purposes. We hate single shear applications and have eliminated them every where we could in the car. That way, if a bearing fails, there is something left to still hold the wheel on the car. (That makes steering easier ) An original Cobra has both the upper and lower ball joints loaded in single shear...as do most cars.

[David Kirkham]

Here is a shot of the front of the chassis. Notice the lengths of the control arms. The is what is called a long arm/short arm system. The upper arm is shorter than the lower arm so the wheel cambers in as it travels up. Also, notice the steering arms are mounted right in line with the upper control arm. That is to minimize the bumpsteer. We have all but eliminated the bump steer in this chassis.

[BossCER]

I am absolutely in awe of what you have created
Chris

[David Kirkham]

Here is a shot of the right rear suspension. Notice the hollowed out rear upright. That is to allow air to flow through the upright to more effectively cool the brakes. That is a trick we took from F1.

Interestingly, you can also notice 2 "false start" rear upper control arms laying there on the table. One of them is the fault of a customer of ours who came in one day with his new Ferrari 430. We begged him to put it on the lift and when we did...well, we saw a better way. The other is the fault of Cosmos (Finite Element Analysis)...telling us we needed more material.

Also, notice we carefully lined the push rod up on the rocker and shock to minimize any side loading that could occur. Finally, you can also see the lower push rod is also mounted in double shear. That way we can get away with very small bolts and fasteners and make a very strong part.

From this view you can see the rear bulk head is slanted backwards--just like an original car. It made the actual manufacture of the part extremely difficult. There were almost constant battles between engineering and manufacturing on this--engineering always won--and I lost my hair (but unfortunately, not my waist!)

[David Kirkham]

Here is a shot of the right rear suspension corner looking forwards. If you look closely you can see the push rod is actually slightly tapered. A push rod is loaded in compression so its failure mode will be buckling. Buckling almost invariably happens in the middle of the part and so we made the middle of the part thicker. There is no reason to make the ends thick--so we cut them off!

If you look at the leading edge of the rear lower control arm, you can see we milled (right into the billet of the control arm) the mounting brackets for the stainless steel brake flex lines. We wanted to keep them safely out of the way of any flying rocks, bugs, jihadis, politicians, or Corvettes our customer happened to run over. Besides, they look really cool tied up like that. The flex lines on an original Cobra aways bugged me they were just left flapping in the breeze. I didn't want lines flapping in the breeze on my automotive sculpture.

Notice the rear bulk head is completely milled out to reduce weight.

Also, notice the really cool adjuster sleeve nuts on the rear upper control arm. The sleeve nuts are threaded with a right hand thread on the outside (next to the control arm) and they have a left hand thread on the rod end. That way you don't have to take the mounting bolt off of the control arm to adjust camber, caster, or toe! Just loosen the jam nuts (not shown in the picture--we forgot them) and turn the sleeve nut and the wheel will move. Then just tighten the jam nuts back down again. On an original Cobra you have to take the control arm bolts OUT of the car to adjust the caster and then shim the control arm forward or backwards. To adjust the camber on the rear you have to take the bolt out, turn the rod end at least 1/2 a turn, and the assemble everything again. It is a real pain. With this sleeve nut option, we can adjust camber, caster, and toe to 0.001 inch if we want to. We borrowed this idea from a Riley and Scott chassis we saw.

Notice the drive flange is extremely tight to the upright. That is so we could make the 1/2 shafts as long as possible. The longer the 1/2 shaft, the less angularity they 1/2 shaft CV bearings see as the wheel moves up and down. That helps the bearings to last longer. The drive flange is made just like a modern F1 with a splined axle that goes all the way through the hub. If there is an axle failure (almost impossible with the 17-4 material we are using) then the hub will still be able to rotate on the bearing. If you brake an axle on an original Cobra then the wheel will fall off. Now, not to scare anyone here as I haven't seen a wheel fall of in years...the last one was a 289 that was originally under engineered in the first place. But, this is customer I definitely didn't want to see n You Tube.

Also, from this angle you can really see the drive pins are milled directly into the rear hub. No need to worry if you torqued your drive pins here! They will never come loose.

[David Kirkham]

Here is a shot of the rear of the chassis. The box will contain the differential. We are going to use the original Dana 44 differential because it is the strongest, lightest, and smallest differential available today.

Notice the reservoirs mounted directly on the shocks. We wanted to keep the package nice and neat. The big gaping hole in between the shocks is for the sway bar. The sway bar will be a "Z" bar design that pivots right there in between the shocks.

[David Kirkham]

Here is an overall view a little further back of the rear of the car.

[David Kirkham]

Here is a rear 3/4 shot of the car. Just for a better overall effect.

I will post more pics as we go along. I am happy to answer any questions you all may have on why we did what we did and how we did it.

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by Venamm

I would say a world class introduction "Kirkham Super Car" to kick the snot out of the Mclarens, Ferrari's, Buggati's....etc....

One day I hope to make that dream come true. Some on this site (lawyers of course) already know things that are lurking in the Skunkworks. But, it may not be what you think...

David

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by Don

David, another use for the chassis, either a C or D ( no tail fin ) Type Jaguar w/ LHD. Might just start a new demand for a replica as there would be a sufficient supply of the dual OHC 6 cyl, or the V-12

We designed the chassis to be able to easily be used with other projects in the future. The Jaguar is definitely a beautiful car.

David

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by Tony Ripepi

Hi Guys,

A couple of (Marketing/Sales) thoughts for the Kirkhams....stay with what works Cobras Slabside, FIA and 427 body styles, independant under pinnings. The Daytona Coupe is work of art and there is a market for them....the only other alternative for the same format is $300,000.00...that makes your price point look really good, for somebody that wants a coupe in Aluminum.

Work a deal with a fiberglass company to produce a body for your chassis that would give you a lower cost of entry for a wider market....possibly with Aluminum hoods/doors/ trunks that would lend the replica the look and feel of an original and all of the bits/pieces/billets in the suspension/chassis that makes your cars the great drivers they are.

One man's opinions,

Tony R.

The interest in the Coupes was way more than I figured! As for fiberglass...well, that is not us. We will leave that to others. We work in aluminum.

David