Million Dollar Skunksworks Kirkham

[David Kirkham]

Here is a shot of the rear support. This is bolted straight down to the rear bulkhead. The body is supported from this structure and the roll bar helps to brace it. It has 1 in square tubes going backwards to support it in the rearward direction. If you look closely, we also milled directly into the part slots for the passenger shoulder harness.

[David Kirkham]

Here is another shot of that same bracket from the rear looking forward. Here you can see the billet work for he shoulder harnesses. No sharp areas to cut the shoulder harnesses!

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by Jamo

A shame to cover it with a body.

Have to keep the bugs off somehow!

David

[David Kirkham]

Here is an over all shot as the part relates to the rest of the car.

[David Kirkham]

Here is a picture of Sandwich's car that I just stumbled across. I couldn't resist posting some of my other "art" work from his wedding day.

[David Kirkham]

Here is a rearward shot of the part. You can see the down tubes here.

[David Kirkham]

[David Kirkham]

We worked really hard to give a "nod" to the original car. Here the trunk lay out is very similar to the original car. We wanted the "look" to be just right and not something from way out in left field. The goal was to make the car as similar to an original as we could--just make everything billet. The gap you see on the right hand side of the panel is because we haven't riveted the panel in yet.

[Hoofa]

David,

What do you guys use for software? Solidworks?

[David Kirkham]

Cosmos
Solidworks
Surfcam
Rhino
OMAX
Camworks

[David Kirkham]

Speaking of CAD software, we have been really impressed with Solidworks. I must caution readers, however, Solidworks is a resource hog and you must have an extremely high performance computer to drive it effectively--especially when you get large assemblies. We use twin dual-core Opterons made by AMD. Without such computing power, you will spend most of your day waiting for the parts to render.

Also, the 2008 software version of Solidworks is not debugged very well and it sucks for stability. So, you need to SAVE OFTEN because it crashes often!

Back to the being impressed part. We have really been impressed with the part fitment. Obviously, we have made many, many parts and they ALL LINE UP! All the holes, all the edges, all the corners. Frankly, I have been very, very surprised that what we drew on the computer is really what we got out of the machine--even after long strings of parts are bolted together.

David

[mr bruce]

Did you machine the flat plate from billit. And how did you machine the square holes in the down tubes? I'd love to see the tooling for that process.

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by mr bruce

Did you machine the flat plate from billit. And how did you machine the square holes in the down tubes? I'd love to see the tooling for that process.

I am not sure what you mean "Did we machine the flat plate from billet." We machined the parts from plate aluminum that we bought.

The down tubes already have square holes in them because they are tubes. If you are asking if we machined the square holes down the tubes, then no, we just used aluminum tubing. But, I guess we could have machined the square holes if we would have wanted to. I am not sure answered your question???

David

[1ntCobra]

Me thinks Mr Bruce is messing with you.

I'm not sure there was ever a claim that every single piece of the finished car will be made from billet aluminum, but perhaps that is what he thinks.

[Lew Ledyard]

David:

How much do you think the completed car will weigh? It looks beefy in the pictures. I have an idea on how to lose some sprung weight.....

[SP01715]

This car is incredible. It may look like a cobra when it is finished, but I think it is more in line with todays modern supercars under the skin. Very nice!!!

[David Kirkham]

1ntCobra,

I guess you could read his post that way??? But I am not sure. I guess the tubes could be made from a billet aluminum block, but I think the effort would be pretty tremendous. Of course, the whole car's effort was pretty tremendous. We used the tubes in those locations because the original car used tubes in those locations--sort of a nod to the original. So why didn't we use tubes in other places??? Artistic license I guess.

Lew, the car weighs in about 20 pounds lighter than an original car. Now, we haven't weighed it yet (not done) but everything else in the CAD was right so far so I imagine that will be right too.

SPO1715,

Thanks for the kind words. That was certainly the goal we had in mind. The proof will be in the test drive, however!

David

[David Kirkham]

Lew,

The car will have VERY light wheels and tires...

David

[Lew Ledyard]

Can't wait to see them!

[David Kirkham]

Now we are going on to the steering system.