Million Dollar Skunksworks Kirkham

[Cobra Lite]

A workman works with his hands
A craftsman works with his hands and his head
But, an artist works with his hands, his head, and his heart

You are artists in the fullest sense of the word.

I have finally made through all these pages after days of reading.
Words absolutely fail to express the beautiful sculpture you have created.
It may have a Cobra body and the same basic dimensions and layout but that is all it has in common with the classic AC car that CS had his team put a V8 engine in. Your Billet car is beyond the realm of the carbon fiber designs called "supercars" these days.

The Veyron may sell for $1.6 million, and I would guess the billet car was double that, and still it is an amazing bargain for the artistic engineering involved.

Bravo gentlemen!

Now when anyone asks the question: "Should I buy a Shelby or a Kirkham?" we can just link them to this thread.
Even though they will not get a billet car, the car they do get will be built by the absolute best.
I believe the name "KIRKHAM" will become the gold standard among Cobras, if it is not already that is!

Any painting by a great artist is better than the best work of an average painter. It will always be worth far more among those who collect art.

I will never be able to afford the best, a Kirkham, but put me on the list for an affordable coffee table copy of "THE BOOK".
Even if it is only semi-affordable, I will scrimp and save to be able to have a copy that I can hold in my hands.

[David Kirkham]

The part on top is a brace to stabilize the shocks. The cut-out area had to be machined away for spring clearance. Everything on the car was a very tight fit. In the bottom photo you can see the "sheet metal" was milled directly into the part. The face of the part you see in the photo is exposed in the trunk.

[David Kirkham]

There were a lot of fixtures to machine all the different angles on the parts. Here you can see a pretty innovative system we use to hold fixture plates with a 2 jaw chuck setup.

[David Kirkham]

Usually, we machined the parts directly out of the plate.

[David Kirkham]

Locktite is your friend when you have to bolt into a "blind" hole. A blind hole is a hole with threads in the hole--in other words, it is not a through-hole such that you can put a nut on the bolt as it sticks through the opposite side of your part.

[David Kirkham]

We made the motor mounts pretty beefy to make the engine a little bit "stressed" in the chassis. Every little bit helps.

[David Kirkham]

Front uprights. We used a Lexus dual row, angular contact bearing on all 4 corners.

[David Kirkham]

There were a lot of little tiny pieces that had to be machined. If it wasn't made from aluminum, it was made from stainless--usually 17-4 PH. Expensive, but very nice to work with. It makes outstanding parts. Notice the cool adjuster screws we made for the control arms. They are left-hand threaded on the inside and right-hand threaded on the outside. You don't have to unbolt your control arm to infinitely adjust the control arm. This is a trick we borrowed from Lemans cars.

[David Kirkham]

We did everything we could to make the car with "no excuses." A lot of parts ended up in the junk pile. I have always loved the quote from Theodore Roosevelt (though some of his policies I could do without).

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat." Theodore Roosevelt

I wanted to use this quote here in the book, but as things got moved around and tweaked the quote ended up in the aluminum section--where it is equally applicable.

[David Kirkham]

We thought about tool paths while we were programming to make the finished part look as nice as we could.

[David Kirkham]

We reprogrammed the control arm so the tool paths wouldn't meet in the center and leave a line at the crotch of the part.

[David Kirkham]

One day we were deburring some parts on the prototype car and we noticed we just couldn't get them to look really nice because we were deburring by hand. Then, we decided to just program all the deburring passes into the part right on the machine. It made the parts look much nicer.

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by Cobra Lite

A workman works with his hands
A craftsman works with his hands and his head
But, an artist works with his hands, his head, and his heart

You are artists in the fullest sense of the word.

I have finally made through all these pages after days of reading.
Words absolutely fail to express the beautiful sculpture you have created.
It may have a Cobra body and the same basic dimensions and layout but that is all it has in common with the classic AC car that CS had his team put a V8 engine in. Your Billet car is beyond the realm of the carbon fiber designs called "supercars" these days.

The Veyron may sell for $1.6 million, and I would guess the billet car was double that, and still it is an amazing bargain for the artistic engineering involved.

Bravo gentlemen!

Now when anyone asks the question: "Should I buy a Shelby or a Kirkham?" we can just link them to this thread.
Even though they will not get a billet car, the car they do get will be built by the absolute best.
I believe the name "KIRKHAM" will become the gold standard among Cobras, if it is not already that is!

Any painting by a great artist is better than the best work of an average painter. It will always be worth far more among those who collect art.

I will never be able to afford the best, a Kirkham, but put me on the list for an affordable coffee table copy of "THE BOOK".
Even if it is only semi-affordable, I will scrimp and save to be able to have a copy that I can hold in my hands.

Thanks for the kind words! I sincerely appreciate them.

We do our best to make our parts as nice as we can. I have a friend looking into printing costs in China right now. The quote we got back from the US was pretty high and they couldn't do the book in the 12 x 12 format that we designed it in.

We'll see what comes of it. I'll keep you posted.

David

[David Kirkham]

Now we are starting to get to the good stuff.

There is a lot of information here on serious materials selection. When I thought of the quote below, I had some specific people in mind. Kenny Hill of Metalore, Mike McCluskey of McCluskey Ltd., Peter Brock, the late Dennis Balchin, the late Carroll Smith, Dr. Kent Kohkonen--BYU Manufacturing Engineering, Dr. Perry Carter-- BYU Manufacturing Engineering, Dr. Richard Heckmann--BYU Histology, and Dr. Cathrine Thomas BYU Religion. Most of these people I spoke about in the book or they are well known in the industry.

You may all wonder about Dr. Thomas of the BYU Religion Department. At BYU religion is pretty much required all the time. One semester religion wasn't fitting in to my schedule and I was "stuck" with an honors religion class on the New Testament as the only one that could fit. The first day Dr. Thomas assigned a paper that could only be one page long. She said honors students had a hard time with one page papers but she really wanted us to think when we wrote it. The next day I turned it in and the following day she returned the graded papers to everyone in the class--except me.

Of course, after class I went up to see what was going on. She kindly answered everyone's questions and somehow quite deftly left me until the end--when everyone else had left the class. Then she looked at me, pulled the my paper out from her folder and handed it to me. It was awash in red ink. Interestingly, there was NO grade a the top. She looked at me and simply said, "David, you are better than this. Turn it in when it is right." She was right. I had just blown through that "dumb religion" paper. It was not my best work by any measure. I could tell I had let her down. I could tell she knew I had let myself down. That brief moment at her desk changed my life. I'm sure she knew all semester long I wasn't the honors type religion student. But that whole semester she treated me (and everyone else in that class) as if I (we) was the most important scholar on campus. She knew what she believed--and she acted accordingly She expected her students to act accordingly as well. I'll never forget her.

[David Kirkham]

The Metalore joints are superb. Kenny showed Thomas and I how he made them. The precision of his parts is, frankly, unbelievable. Interestingly, he is completely self taught.

[David Kirkham]

The silicon nitride balls are extremely light. Metalore built his joints around the size that is commonly made for jet engines.

[Hexnut72]

So would you rather have brass balls or silicone nitride balls?

"Man those rally drivers must have silicone nitride balls"

"I don't know about the rally drivers but the F1 guys sure do..."

[RodKnock]

When can I send KMP 539 back for some upgrades?

[David Kirkham]

The boots are really cool. They have a labyrinth seal in them so they can breath. They are extremely compact.

[David Kirkham]

Metalore made the bolts too. Superb manufacturing. The bolts are milled from solid stock. Notice all the holes are chamfered and deburred.