Polished Kirkham with V12 engine at London

[C427Kirkham]

Hey everybody, what a build that was! We redesigned the chassis to accommodate the size of the engine, as well as the foot boxes, and heat shields. The heat shield had to be pressed up against the dashboard, and there is no room for your feet in the boxes. The transmission was specially designed short to account for the excess size. The drive shaft was pretty stubby too! To get the engine into the car we had to turn it almost all the way on its end and drop it straight down. Then slowly rotate it inch by inch to keep squeezing it all the way into the car. It took almost every guy here to get it in there. We had to take off the valve covers, fuel rails, and several other parts to get it inside.

We designed the cobra specially for the engine. To my recollection, the engine is a modified Chevy 450 big block specially made for race boats. Not many were made at all. The owner of the car took his engine to be dynoed. While it was running, cylinder 6 started throwing black smoke. They shut it down and found that it had crunched one of the valves, and it didn't even care. It just kept running. Did a number on everything inside though, so after he got the whole mess fixed and put back together, we finished out the car. We didn't start it however which was no fun for the guys here at the shop. We really wanted to hear it run!!! It was an 860 cubic inch engine and was in the territory of 1200 horses. Quite the build for us!

Chris Kirkham
Kirkham Motorsports