Front and Rear Track, 427 ARE ALL BOOKS WRONG?

[Roger Bolick]

What is the actual track of the 427 Competition cars?

What is the track of the Kirkham 427?

NOTE: Its easiest to measure the hub mount face to hub mount face and add the wheel offset(s) to eliminate all sorts of measuring errors.

FYI, the track is the distance between the centerline of the wheels (or tires) with the caster and chamber set to zero (otherwise you get different readings depending where you pull the numbers).

Most books and advertising literture show 56" front and 58" rear.

Some books show 56" front and 56" rear.

"Cobra 427 Chassis Instruction Book" shows 53.96" front and 55.125" rear (53" street).

Street cars have different "depth" rear hubs and thus you need to change these to properly fit "competition" width rear wheels.

Trigo and Halibrand wheels have a 1.4375 offset on the front and 1.6875 on the rear (centerline outboard of mounting face)

BEST I CAN MEASURE, MY KIRKHAM DOES NOT MATCH ANY OF THE ABOVE?????? (using hub to hub and adding wheel offsets)

WHAT's THE REAL STORY?

Thanks,
Roger

[David Kirkham]

Roger,

We copied CSX3104 identically. The hubs on the rear of a comp car are almost IDENTICAL to the hubs of a street car. (The ONLY difference is the threaded portion of the knock off--where the wing nut screws on--is about 3/4 of an inch longer.) The face of the hub--the part that determines the track--is in identically the same place, both front and rear.

As the original cars had both sunbursts and the normal Halibrands on them, the wheel offsets are not the same---hence, the quoted differences in tracks you have seen.

As for what the original track is, I do not know. (I guess I could measure our original car.) Your problem with the literature is, of course, not the first time false data about the Cobra has been published. There are just so few of the original cars around no one really knows.

We have sold at least 40 suspensions to original car owners over the years. Of course, we have sold numerous cars to Shelby for he CSX4000 cars as well. One thing I do believe, though, is our car's suspensions are as close as anyone will likely ever get to the original.

David

[muz]

What was your track measurements Rodger ?

Did you measure your orginal car David ?