Go Back   Club Cobra > Manufacturers, Engine Builders, tools, and parts. > Kirkham Motorsports

Welcome to Club Cobra!  The World's largest non biased Shelby Cobra related site!

  •  » Representation from nearly all Cobra/Daytona/GT40 manufacturers
  •  » Help from all over the world for your questions
  •  » Build logs for you and all members
  •  » Blogs
  •  » Image Gallery
  •  » Many thousands of members and nearly 1 million posts! 

YES! I want to register an account for free right now!  p.s.: For registered members this ad will NOT show

Nevada Classics
MMG Superformance
Main Menu
Nevada Classics
Nevada Classics
Keith Craft Racing
MMG Superformance
Advertise at CC
Banner Ad Rates
MMG Superformance
Keith Craft Racing
April 2025
S M T W T F S
    1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30      

Kirkham Motorsports

Like Tree2Likes

Reply
 
LinkBack Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1 (permalink)  
Old 07-06-2008, 09:50 PM
David Kirkham's Avatar
CC Member
Visit my Photo Gallery
Original Shelby Owner


 
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Provo, Ut
Cobra Make, Engine: Kirkham, 427
Posts: 6,990
Not Ranked     
Default

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, President Kirkham Motorsports
Manufacturer Aluminum Body Kit Cars and supplier to Shelby* for their CSX4000, CSX7000, and CSX8000 289 and 427 Cobra
*Kirkham Motorsports is not affiliated with Ford or Carroll Shelby or any of their trademarks.
"Fear is the thief of dreams."
Reply With Quote
  #2 (permalink)  
Old 07-06-2008, 09:52 PM
David Kirkham's Avatar
CC Member
Visit my Photo Gallery
Original Shelby Owner


 
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Provo, Ut
Cobra Make, Engine: Kirkham, 427
Posts: 6,990
Not Ranked     
Default

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

__________________
David Kirkham, President Kirkham Motorsports
Manufacturer Aluminum Body Kit Cars and supplier to Shelby* for their CSX4000, CSX7000, and CSX8000 289 and 427 Cobra
*Kirkham Motorsports is not affiliated with Ford or Carroll Shelby or any of their trademarks.
"Fear is the thief of dreams."
Reply With Quote
Reply



Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On



All times are GMT -7. The time now is 06:27 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.0
Copyright ©2000 - 2025, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Search Engine Friendly URLs by vBSEO 3.6.0
The representations expressed are the representations and opinions of the clubcobra.com forum members and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and viewpoints of the site owners, moderators, Shelby American, any other replica manufacturer, Ford Motor Company. This website has been planned and developed by clubcobra.com and its forum members and should not be construed as being endorsed by Ford Motor Company, or Shelby American or any other manufacturer unless expressly noted by that entity. "Cobra" and the Cobra logo are registered trademarks for Ford Motor Co., Inc. clubcobra.com forum members agree not to post any copyrighted material unless the copyrighted material is owned by you. Although we do not and cannot review the messages posted and are not responsible for the content of any of these messages, we reserve the right to delete any message for any reason whatsoever. You remain solely responsible for the content of your messages, and you agree to indemnify and hold us harmless with respect to any claim based upon transmission of your message(s). Thank you for visiting clubcobra.com. For full policy documentation refer to the following link: CC Policy