Million Dollar Skunksworks Kirkham

[David Kirkham]

I will post captions to the above pics when I can get a few minutes.

David

[Mark IV]

WOW!!!!

Those Kirkham boys are amazing! They have a lift that works SIDEWAYS!!!!!!!!

This is what happens when people with CNC machines have too much time on their hands...........................................

[David Kirkham]

Thanks for the kind words!

Actually, I wish I had a lot more time.

David

[Dingocooke]

Great thread and some real automotive porn going on here!!

Back on the original topic, for me I guess Id be happy as a sand man with a Kirkham 427, all 100% period fittings, tubular suspension etc etc and my only concession to modernity would a nice alloy block 427SO replica. Of course a cammer would be nice....but hey Id better not get too greedy, with this plan I'd still have change from the imaginary $1m to buy a good Ser1 E type DHC when Im in more of a cruising frame of mind, an early Dino justfor the looks, and get my garage/workshop extended to get all this new stuff in!!

Back in the real world, I keep looking at secondhand Kirkhams for sale in the US and from this side of the pond they look a real bargain; hmm maybe if I sell the Crendon and the 916 and pop a kidney on Ebay I might get close!!

Best wishes to everyone from an occasional visitor to club cobra.

Steve

(From the land of the $12 gallon of gas)

[David Kirkham]

I'm glad you like it. It sure has been a long journey. We are now making the tooling for the 3/4 inch tube that supports the body. It should be finished today or tomorrow.

12$/gallon gas

Sounds like Saudi King Abdullah was right...someone needs to lower their taxes!

I guess the guys in the UK will not be asking for the "42 gallon" gas tank option any time soon!

David

[Dingocooke]

Originally Posted by David Kirkham

I'm glad you like it. It sure has been a long journey. We are now making the tooling for the 3/4 inch tube that supports the body. It should be finished today or tomorrow.

12$/gallon gas

Sounds like Saudi King Abdullah was right...someone needs to lower their taxes!

I guess the guys in the UK will not be asking for the "42 gallon" gas tank option any time soon!

David

Yes thats what happens when we let a tight fisted scotsman first be chancellor and then Prime minister!!
The 'experts' (thats 'x' for unknown quantity, and spurt for drip under pressure) reckon we will see the £7 gallon by the end of 2008; thats $14!!

It currently costs me £108-110 ($220) to fill my circa 18 gallon Crendon tank up from empty before an afternoon hooning around; a sobering thought that your big 42 gallon tank would be £250 experience at the pumps for us ($504); still maybe a good investment the way gas prices are rising here??

Have fun and remember our pain next time youre feeling pain at the pumps; we havent had gas as cheap as you guys have now for over a decade!!

Regards

Steve

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by Dingocooke

Have fun and remember our pain next time youre feeling pain at the pumps; we havent had gas as cheap as you guys have now for over a decade!!

Regards

Steve

We Americans don't like to pay excessive taxes. I seem to remember the last time someone wanted to tax us too much, we had a little Tea Party.

Time to vote in some new representatives, I'd say.

David

[HI Cobra]

I am a new member of the Kirkham family but I am really glad #142 has
a 42 gallon tank - yes it does cost $ to fill it but with no gas gage it does
tend to eliminate run out worry. Hey, you are going to burn the gas anyway,
this just saves time stopping at the gas station all the time. My expectations
were high when I picked up the Cobra but they were greatly exceeded when
i drove this jewel home - a nice 200 + mile drive.

[David Kirkham]

Welcome to the Kirkham family! All it takes is a few miles and the smiles wipe away all the pain at the pump!

Good to hear 142 is still running strong!

David

[TButtrick]

This is incredible work. I'd second the suggestion on a lightweight E type with removable LeMans top.

[Berg]

Hey David,

Amazing work, I'm one of the many who have been following this with excitement.

Quick question, are the jack hooks on this going to be functional? (meaning that you won't risk tweaking the body when the car is lifted by the jack hooks). Just curious, I figured if any frame could support this type of load, it would be yours.


cheers
-Will

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by TButtrick

This is incredible work. I'd second the suggestion on a lightweight E type with removable LeMans top.

Thanks for the kind words! That is a really beautiful car. I have thought about making it more than once, but for now, we are buried on the billet car to get it finished.

David

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by Berg

Hey David,

Amazing work, I'm one of the many who have been following this with excitement.

Quick question, are the jack hooks on this going to be functional? (meaning that you won't risk tweaking the body when the car is lifted by the jack hooks). Just curious, I figured if any frame could support this type of load, it would be yours.


cheers
-Will

You are right, the original car tweaked the body if you picked the car up by the jack hooks. Of course, as a race car, they really didn't care. Our car "should" be able to be picked up by the jack hooks...I haven't tried yet!

Hopefully I will post more pics tonight. This week was more engineering and calculations than making parts. A big chunk of the week was spent making tooling for the body tubes.

David

[Hollywood]

It Is Nice To Be Here At The Dealership When It Is Quiet And Look At The New Pics And Posts On This Thread. Can't Wait To See Some Of The Final Work.
Are You Going To Post Any Live Video Of Say A Dyno Test Or Running Out. I Am Sure We Would All Love To Here Her Purr!!!

Keep Up The Good Work And Thank You.

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by Hollywood

It Is Nice To Be Here At The Dealership When It Is Quiet And Look At The New Pics And Posts On This Thread. Can't Wait To See Some Of The Final Work.
Are You Going To Post Any Live Video Of Say A Dyno Test Or Running Out. I Am Sure We Would All Love To Here Her Purr!!!

Keep Up The Good Work And Thank You.

Thanks for the kind words!

I will post pics of the custom tooling we made for our CNC tube bender tomorrow. Also, I will post some videos of the car, machining, CNC tube bending, etc. as soon as I can breathe!

David

[David Kirkham]

We spent this week test driving the car, adjusting springs, tire pressures, etc. We also started the last phase of engineering for the car--the body mounting. We designed all the tools to CNC bend the body tubes. We also started the CAD drawings so we could create files to CNC bend the tubes.

There are only 4 things left to do now.

make the body tubes
mount the body
polish the body
install the interior.

That sounds like not much, but it is actually very time consuming and difficult to engineer the body mounting and to get it all set up properly.

Here are some pics of the tooling we made this week for the body tubes.

The steel we make the tooling from is very expensive and they don't make it in plates. So, we have to take big round bars and cut them into cookies the size we need to make the parts out of. We then weld bars to the side of the cookie so we can get the cookie away from the chuck jaws of the machine. If you are too close to the chuck jaws, you don't have enough room to make the part without the machine running into itself.

I forgot to take a picture of the tool we made, but I will take some pics tomorrow. We are machine almost everything in 4 axis so we can spin the part all the way around. That way we can machine the top and the bottom of the part all in one operation and then cut the part out. We invented a very special way of cutting parts out so they can be machined all in one set up. Every time the operator touches the part, they introduce the chance of screwing something up. This way we don't let the operator touch the part. We call it fixtureless machining because we don't need a fixture to make extremely accurate parts.

This is the CNC tube bender we made tooling for this week.

[David Kirkham]

And here is a pic of the car on its wheels--in test phase.

[David Kirkham]

This is a different view of the bender. The rollers at the top (the machine is not entirely set up at this point so it is hard to see) are 3 rolls. One of them is movable (on the bending arm) and so it will move at a certain angle and the tube is then pushed against that angle to make a large radius bend in a tube. It is really quite cool to watch it in action. I will post more pics and maybe even a video when it is all together so you can see how it all works.

The bronze color shaft with a groove in it is actually the axle the bending dies sit on. Well, we needed a smaller radius than the machine could handle, so we just made a new axle with a groove in it. The hood, trunk, and doors, have a very tight radius in them that require the special tool we made.

[David Kirkham]

Here is a pic of the collet we made for the push bending. We made the collet from 17-4 PH H900 material. It is the same material we make our hubs and axles from. It is ridiculously strong. I love the stuff because it is a PH or precipitation hardening material. PH means that in order to harden the material, I only need to heat it up to 900 degrees. Other materials, like chromoly have to be heated up to 1525 F and then quenched to get hard. The quenching process is hell on the material. Any stress raisers will cause the material to crack from the quenching shock. 17-4 is really expensive (about 5 times more expensive than chromoly) but you don't have to worry about losing a part in heat treat from a stress crack so it is worth it to us. Not to mention, 17-4 eliminates micro cracks which scare me to death. Some things are just better to use the good stuff on. There are better materials, of course, but cost becomes prohibitive.

In the previous picture, it is a little hard to tell, but you can see the 2 inch collet in the end of the push ram. It has the mandrel sticking through it. It is the piece with all the little holes in it that is cut into 4 segments. I cut this collet apart in the next pictures.

[David Kirkham]

Here is the other side of the collet. The part is pretty precise to make sure everything has the right gripping power--not too tight to crush the tube and not too loose so you can't control the tube as you move it around and index it for the next bend. Those holes are only 0.1875 in diameter and they are almost 4 inches deep! Drilling all those holes made me SWEAT bullets. We have a special mill set up with a special cutting oil (not a water based coolant) for our really nasty milling operations (like our hubs). It makes a MESS; but, it makes nice parts

and no broken drill bits after almost 48 inches of drilling through nasty stainless.

Now granted, stainless is not the material of choice for most bending operations. It only gets to about 45 Rockwell C. But for as little bending as we do (we aren't making 1,000,000 parts like some guys do) so we don't need the Rockwell 55-60 stuff. That stuff is a real pain in the butt to machine, heat treat, and hold tolerance with. You end up having to send it out for heat treat and grinding and that just ends up eating up your life in waiting for sub-contractors. We do our own PH hardening in house (and some quench hardening when it is forced upon us--but I try to avoid that like a politician telling the truth).