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]

We tried 3 different collector lengths until we found the perfect length/look combination.

[David Kirkham]

Here is another shot so you can see how tight we kept the exhaust to the car. I hate it when the exhaust drags on the ground.

[David Kirkham]

Here you can see we had to use a lot of bends to get everything to line up.

A lot of people have emailed me wondering how to make head tubes. Well, this is how you do it. First you bend up some tubes on your CNC tube bender or just buy them. Take the bends and start cutting and fitting until you have an exhaust system. The black marks on the tubes are from a magic marker we use to orient the bends right. We then cut the tubes on a band saw and then use masking tape (believe it or not) to tape the bends together. Masking tape works really well to hold the tube in place. Just peel it back and tack weld the tube in place when you have it in the right position.

[David Kirkham]

So, why didn't we get the car running...

Well, you keep running into little problems like this. This is a Jegs water pump part number 50950 that we were going to use. When we opened up the box, we noticed the fittings were Jegs "specials." (That means they don't fit ANYTHING metric or otherwise!) Also, we needed 2 outlets and not one so we needed a "Y" connection. Thomas suggested we just make our own water pump housing...no big deal. I turned it over to Sandwich and a few hours later...

[David Kirkham]

[David Kirkham]

Here you can see the rear intake that we made to fit a 2 inch hose (the normal size of the inlet on the water pump of a 427 Cobra). The outlets are JIC dash 12 with one outlet to both sides of the original water pump.

[David Kirkham]

Sorry for the blurry pics sometimes, but this shiny stuff is really hard to get the camera to focus on.

David

[David Kirkham]

Here is a pic of the billet adapters we made to adapt the electric pump to the block. They are o-ringed on the back so they don't LEAK!

[Maricopa]

I hate when the exhaust drags the ground

David did you consider oval pipe? I used 3" pipe on my car that's been 'squished' to 2.25".

(Ugg, believe me it's painful to add my 'crapsmanship' to this thread. )

[David Kirkham]

[quote=Maricopa;854199]I hate when the exhaust drags the ground

David did you consider oval pipe? I used 3" pipe on my car that's been 'squished' to 2.25".

(Ugg, believe me it's painful to add my 'crapsmanship' to this thread. )

Maricopa,

We did consider oval pipe but it would not work in our application. Our problem was not ground clearance under the car (rocker to ground). If we tucked the pipe up close, it cleared. Our problem was we had to cut, twist and orient the bends in very strange and tight areas. An oval tube does not allow you 360 degrees of rotation to work with.

As for "crapsmanship," we have all committed our fair share of boo boos. As I look back on some of the things in life I have done I wonder what the hey was I thinking. I assure you that you don't have the corner on that market!

David

[David Kirkham]

Maricopa,

Hopefully this pic will explain it better than I was able to. A pic is worth at least 1000 words. Here you can see some of the snakey bends we had to make.

[David Kirkham]

This is how you make the snakes. We take the bends and cut them on a band saw. The critical thing to remember is to ALWAYS cut your bends toward the MIDDLE of the radius. That way you end up with a round hole and not an oval on one end and another oval (that doesn't match) on the other end.

[David Kirkham]

What good is stainless if you don't polish it!

Here we are using our standard muffler that is ALL stainless. The outer shell is stainless; the inner tube is stainless; the packing is stainless. No rust or packing blow out here!

Above the mufflers, you can see various bends and cuts. It is one big jig saw puzzle.