Million Dollar Skunksworks Kirkham

[David Kirkham]

This is a shot of the prototype gas tank (just to make sure everything fits). The tank for the car will be polished to a mirror finish. The tank is stainless (about anything we make that is not aluminum we make out of stainless--just say no to rust).

[David Kirkham]

This is a picture of the steering intermediate shaft support. The angle on the steering column shafts is so high, we had to use a Borgeson double jointed u-joint. When you use those floppy monsters, you MUST use another support in the system to keep everything rigid. It just barely clears the #5 head tube.

[David Kirkham]

Speaking of head tubes and exhaust...the customer wanted the exhaust to run out the back...complete custom job here.

[David Kirkham]

We used 2 inch radius bends on the entire system (except the collectors). We had to keep everything as tight as possible.

[David Kirkham]

Here is a shot of the exhaust going under the car. As you can see, it is tucked right up next to the frame to clear the ground.

[David Kirkham]

Here is a shot from the driver's foot box. As you can see, we moved the engine back almost 6 inches!

[David Kirkham]

This is another shot from the driver's foot box. Everything was done on CAD to make everything fit. We digitized the body, the engine, the transmission, and the differential! We would have never got anything to fit without the CAD files in Solidworks.

In this shot, you can see the front and rear brake hard line snaking down the inside of the driver's foot box. In an original 427 Cobra, there are 6 brake hard lines. The control arms are so long on this car, we only have 2 hard lines--one front and one rear. They then "tee" to the flex lines and out to the calipers.

[David Kirkham]

I was up late last night and so I just posted a lot of pictures without captions. I am going right now to caption the pictures so you may want to look back over the past page or two.

Thanks for looking and thanks for the comments and emails!

David

[David Kirkham]

Another week has come and gone. This, however, is a very special week...stay tuned.

Here are some pics of the parts as they came out of the mills.

[David Kirkham]

Here you can see the sway bar pivot.

[David Kirkham]

Here you can see the plumbing coming together.

[David Kirkham]

Here is the radiator being hooked up. Notice we ran the oil cooler lines low and under the radiator. In an original Cobra the lines are run up high. We mounted the oil filter down low on the chassis so when you change the oil you don't have it drip all over your nice chassis.

[David Kirkham]

Here is a side view of everything coming together.