Million Dollar Skunksworks Kirkham

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by Hoofa

This has been truly inspirational for me, I almost hate to see it end. What's next? I can't wait!

I just got Solidworks, I already designed a billet hood latch with my logo in it. This Car, along with Solidworks, changed the way I look at everything. I've been doing the graphics for the Solidworks trade Show for about 4 years. I always read the stuff but it never sparked an interest until you guys showed me what could be done with it. Thanks again for sharing.

I am glad you like the car! Thanks for the kind words!

As for what's next, it might surprise you that I actually do very little on this car. I just sort of direct traffic, make aesthetic and manufacturing decisions, and bolt on a few things when needed. I am on the next Skunkworks project. As cool as this car is, the next one is (I sincerely hope) far superior. Only time will tell on that one however.

Solidworks is a cool program. It is a little unstable, and an incredible resource hog but we put up with it. We could not have done this project without it.

David

[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.

[David Kirkham]

Here if you look to the bottom of the chassis, you can see where we mounted the oil filter down low on the chassis.

[David Kirkham]

Here is a shot of a new radiator we want to try out. This is a Hitachi unit that is quite small and it doesn't require us to use a voltage regulator as it is internally regulated.

[David Kirkham]

If anyone is wondering, this is the part number of the alternator we are experimenting with. I will let you know if it works when we start the motor up...stay tuned!

[big-boss]

David,
Electric Water Pump? Any experience with that setup? What alternator is that? Thanks

[David Kirkham]

Here is how we made the adjuster for the alternator. Remember, we don't have a water pump (like a normal 427 FE motor) to mount the alternator on to. In this shot you can also see how we plumbed the water hoses into the block.

[David Kirkham]

Here you can see the brake lines hooked up. Notice the brake lines are hard, stainless lines, and the clutch line is a braided stainless line.

[David Kirkham]

Here is a shot of the custom lower radiator tube we had to make to snake around the new billet chassis.

[David Kirkham]

Here is another one of the curve balls that always get thrown your way. Our normal radiator tank has the outlet pointed to the driver's side of the vehicle. Well, that ran right into the shocks...

So, we had to change the outlet to face the front of the car. Here you can see the new tank. We had a lot of these little surprises on the car!

[David Kirkham]

Here is the battery getting mounted. Notice we mounted it on the right hand side of the car--to offset the driver's weight and balance out the car any way possible.

[David Kirkham]

We have a lot of friends (customers) come by all the time. They love to help out. Here is the owner of KMP530. Another Utah owner. Utah has more Kirkham kit car owners than any other state except California.

[David Kirkham]

Here is the dash set up. This is just a temporary dash. The real one is tan.

[David Kirkham]

This is a shot of the temporary shifter. There are a million things to think about and make and you don't always remember everything. But, we wanted to drive today, so we just whipped one up real quick to test ergonomics, aesthetics, functionality, etc.

Notice the top of the tunnel is slightly off. We ended up moving the engine back slightly further than we originally planned because we had more room than we originally figured. We will make a new tunnel top to fit.

[David Kirkham]

Another motor shot. You can see it has been move back quite a bit.