Million Dollar Skunksworks Kirkham

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by N2VENOM

David, How about a couple accessories?

1. A cool "removable" Armrest/compartement with a drink holder for the long drives? Needs to be removable for the track. I have seen others but am sure you guys can design something really nice and not too cheesy.

2. Retrofit a gas cap assembly for the filler tube.

If you need to work on the Block and Daytona first I'll understand. Darren

Darren,

We did make a really nice console box in a car some time ago. I didn't think about a drink holder, but we certainly could have put one inside. I am not sure what you mean by question number 2 ???

David

[David Kirkham]

We knew the tunnel was critical for improving the stiffness of the chassis. A lot of work went into designing the tunnel for maximum chassis stiffness.

[David Kirkham]

The tunnel is made from 3 pieces. They all bolt together and are hollowed out on the inside to reduce weight. The tunnel pieces were made from 1/2" plate. The plates were initially blanked out on our water jet, then milled.

[David Kirkham]

The tunnel was quite complicated to make none of the angles are orthogonal. The rear bulkhead sits on an incline and we had to tie the rear bulkhead to the footboxes.

[David Kirkham]

There was very little room around the transmission in the tunnel. An original 427 Cobra has a sharp bend in the tunnel on the passenger side to allow for the emergency brake handle. We elected to remove that bend to make the tunnel as straight (and stiff) as possible. Here you can also see the incline of the rear bulkhead. The different angles were a challenge to machine correctly.

[N2VENOM]

Originally Posted by David Kirkham

Darren,

We did make a really nice console box in a car some time ago. I didn't think about a drink holder, but we certainly could have put one inside. I am not sure what you mean by question number 2 ???

David

David, Sorry I was'nt too clear. Obama's health care reform has made me a little delirious. I would like to adapt the filler tube to take an OEM gas cap.

[David Kirkham]

This is a good shot that illustrates how we tied the center of the rear bulkhead to the footboxes. The weakest point in the chassis is right under the doors (because there is no roof there). We had to make the cockpit area as stiff as possible to make up for it. We did that by tying the sides of the rear bulkhead to the front of the footboxes and the center of the rear bulkhead to rear of the footboxes. We couldn't tie the center of the rear bulkhead to the front of the footboxes because they changed angle at that point to spread out around the engine.

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by N2VENOM

David, Sorry I wasn't too clear. Obama's health care reform has made me a little delirious. I would like to adapt the filler tube to take an OEM gas cap.

Darren, I hope for your patients' sake they keep paying you and your dedicated guys.

Gas Cap,

Do you mean you want the big 4 inch fuel filler hose for the gas cap?

David

[David Kirkham]

To save as much weight as possible, we machined the ebrake mounting right into the tunnel. Notice we also made a little drive shaft safety loop around the drive shaft.

[David Kirkham]

I'll comment on the rear wheel well tomorrow. Now, I'm off to do more Skunk Works projects. Happy to answer any questions.

David

[N2VENOM]

David, I would like to have a secondary gas cap inside the filler cap as a precaution in the event of an accident and roll over. We all know how I drive and being in the business of taking car of broken bodies has made me overly cautious. PS KMP500 is running great. I participated in my first autocross last weekend.

[Don]

David:

RE: Aerogel mentioned on Reply#1023

" Every pocket on the inside of the tunnel was filled with individually cut out Aerogel-impregnated insulation. Aerogel is an amazing insulation "

Is this the product ?

http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~aerog...utaerogel.html

Are there any other specialty products used that may be of interest ?

............thanks

[slider701]

Originally Posted by N2VENOM

David, I would like to have a secondary gas cap inside the filler cap as a precaution in the event of an accident and roll over. We all know how I drive and being in the business of taking car of broken bodies has made me overly cautious. PS KMP500 is running great. I participated in my first autocross last weekend.

The real trick would be to adapt Ford's capless fuel door that was introduced on the Ford GT and is now standard on most 2009/2010 Ford products

http://www.leftlanenews.com/ford-to-...odel-line.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMEFN1uRGzY

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by N2VENOM

David, I would like to have a secondary gas cap inside the filler cap as a precaution in the event of an accident and roll over. We all know how I drive and being in the business of taking car of broken bodies has made me overly cautious. PS KMP500 is running great. I participated in my first autocross last weekend.

Hmmm,

Let me think about that.

I hope the autocross went well!

David

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by Don

David:

RE: Aerogel mentioned on Reply#1023

" Every pocket on the inside of the tunnel was filled with individually cut out Aerogel-impregnated insulation. Aerogel is an amazing insulation "

Is this the product ?

http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~aerog...utaerogel.html

Are there any other specialty products used that may be of interest ?

............thanks

Yes, that is the product. In insulation form, it is make up of tiny beads that are impregnated into the fabric. The stuff is phenomenal.

Other specialty products are the different alloys we used in making the car. Maraging 300 comes to mind for one off gears and other parts that need incredible amounts of high strength without the worry of cracking when quenched. The price of the metal is pretty steep--but certainly less than a failed part.

David

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by slider701

The real trick would be to adapt Ford's capless fuel door that was introduced on the Ford GT and is now standard on most 2009/2010 Ford products

Hmmmm, I'll think about this one too.

David

[Ronbo]

David, well done on the book. Lots of pictures and not too much jibber-jabber as Mr. T would say.

I see a set of CV's in my future, glad to see you adopted this into the cars.

I'm curious what your thoughts are about a modified tunnel design for the existing frame that would help stiffen the chassis? (for the production cars) I'm sure there are other weak spots (like the frame rails being so far inboard), but it seems like the tunnel could provide a large improvement to chassis stiffness without impacting the originality too badly. (especially since it's covered in carpet anyway)

[lloyds1]

Just out of curiosity, why didn't you use Brembo or AP calipers & carbon ceramic rotors? I'm sure none of the super cars that you put on the lift had Wilwood brakes.

Other than that, I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!

I just bought my first cobra (superformance), but I cant wait to upgrade to one of your cars in a few years.

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by Ronbo

David, well done on the book. Lots of pictures and not too much jibber-jabber as Mr. T would say.

I see a set of CV's in my future, glad to see you adopted this into the cars.

I'm curious what your thoughts are about a modified tunnel design for the existing frame that would help stiffen the chassis? (for the production cars) I'm sure there are other weak spots (like the frame rails being so far inboard), but it seems like the tunnel could provide a large improvement to chassis stiffness without impacting the originality too badly. (especially since it's covered in carpet anyway)

There is really nothing that can be done to the tunnel on our cars to make the chassis any stiffer. The best that can be done is to put a tubular backbone under the tunnel--connecting the differential box on the chassis to the down tubes by the foot boxes--like was done on the Daytona Coupe. The problem here, however, is the down tubes are not very strong and there probably wouldn't be much to gain. On the other hand, even a little improvement in chassis stiffness is a big help.

David

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by lloyds1

Just out of curiosity, why didn't you use Brembo or AP calipers & carbon ceramic rotors? I'm sure none of the super cars that you put on the lift had Wilwood brakes.

Other than that, I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!

I just bought my first cobra (superformance), but I cant wait to upgrade to one of your cars in a few years.

Thanks for the kind words. You ask a very good question. Obviously, we could have used any brake caliper we wanted. The original vision of the car was to have it look as original as possible from the exterior. Therefore, we were constrained to use 15 inch rims. There is very little space on the inside of the 15 inch rims.

Also, we wanted to use the largest diameter rotor that was possible. We used a 12.19 inch diameter rotor which leave precious little room for anything else.

The problem came with the ebrake caliper. If you look at most ebrake systems, they are extremely heavy and bulky. There was no ebrake system from a Brembo we could get to fit that was reasonably light. Our ebrake system is extremely light and compact. The particular design of the Wilwood rear caliper allows us to remove a spacer and to place in an adapter that will hold the ebrake caliper unit...much like an original car's set up.

As for ceramic--again the problem was with the diameter of the wheel. There are no 12.2 inch rotors that we could find. We even went so far as to call the guys in England that make the rotors. All of their rotors are for rims that are much larger in diameter.

David