Announcing New Kirkham Billet Aluminum 427 Block

[eschaider]

David,

The art you guys create leaves me at a loss for words. The cars are like fine jewelry. Your attention to detail is astounding.

I have raced blown Chrysler stuff over the last 35 or 40 years. Hemi blocks are stout but the best looking ones fall country miles short of what you have created here! The ingenuity in creating the water jackets and, as usual for something from you folks, the overall design of the block is somewhere between 60 and 70 on a scale of 1 to 10.

I am continuously astounded by your product offerings. Each time I think you folks have created the ultimate you turn around and out do yourselves. What you have created, yet again, can only be described as uniquely Kirkham in every respect and desirable beyond words.

I can't say keep up the good work because I suspect you are already a country mile farther down the Kirkham development road so instead I'll say thanks for being such a special part of this special community.

Congrats on a spectacular design.

Ed

[Brent Mills]

Very very cool, David! Man, to have just a quarter of the cool tools, know how, and choices of cars to drive, I'd be one happy camper.

[CSX 4027]

I guess it might be time to do a "Flip Top" Replica. Didn't that car weigh about 1600lbs without the motor?

Good show ol friend...

David,
You spend so much time in the cnc, you could probably do your own dental work..

[Bunkie314]

David,

I was wondering what you were up too when I seen this sitting in the front of the shop at your open house last Saturday. I didn't get to stay all day and had to leave around 1:30. Did you announce at the open house or was it today?

What kind of heads and intakes are you planning? TP's? I have some (heads & 2x4 intake) that I might be willing to offer up for ND printing.

My Genesis is 122 lbs which I believe used to be the Ford block as well. Shaving that much material weight out is amazing!! Well, that is if it holds the cycles. Now I wish I had asked questions about it. I thought you were prototyping something, but had no idea.

ETA on an assembly on a DynoJet?

BTW, the pork and sause was outstanding! Thank you for the event, it well worth the drive down from IF.

[decooney]

David,
John M. hasn't stopped talking about that wood block since he was down there this past weekend seeing it in person. It's great to see a picture of what he was talking about. Good luck on this project. Very cool. DC

[Woodz428]

I'd have to raise issue with the comments regarding how wide spread the nikasil coating is in bike engines. I worked in the bike industry for 40 years and unless they have changed drasticly in the last few, it was only moto-cross bikes that had them. They are of course torn down after every race. All the sport bikes ran steel sleeves, as did most street bikes. I have had some of those cylinders recoated and it isn't that cheap, actually it was usually cheaper to have a steel sleeve put in. I'd hate to see the price for re-coating a V8. Moto-cross bikes are usually outdated every year as well, so there is no such thing as long term usage. I'd rather have the extra weight of steel sleeves. Just my observations.

[Dr.Dale]

...Bmw Boxer twin motorcycles have used liner-less plated bores since 1981. Motoguzzi had them before BMW did.

[PJS50]

Woodsy,
I know my KX125 dirt bike has a nikasil coated bore, but since I have never been crazy enough to get into fast street bikes (because I would soon be dead!) I cannot vouch for them...
My Artic Cat snowmobiles also utilize nikasil in the cylinder bores...
If memory serves me, when I had to get one of those Cat cylinder "jugs" re-nikasiled about 5 years ago, it ran me about $120 for the ONE!
Yea, it ain't cheap, but it is some pretty awesome stuff...
Cool block David!!! I wonder if your use of all of that aluminum making these blocks is going to affect the price of my "beverage of choice"... BEEERRRR!!

[Woodz428]

I am full aware of the many applications of nikasil.. I was just taking issue with the broad statement regarding motorcycles. By the way, the BMW and Guzzi are not high volume production in comparison to the rest of the industry. Snow mobiles either, and I have repaired plenty of those as well. I would also suggest that Beemers, especially, are better maintained than a lot of vehicles. Most nikasil cylinders also run a lot lighter ring tension to decrease the wear on the bores, which if you are looking for max HP is a plus, but not neccesarily for long term usage.Once again the moto-cross boys, and they are boys now days, always carry a spare set of rings or 2 and pull the jug after every event. The owners manuals even reccomend a frequent ring change to keep top performance.As stated, I do think the block is beautiful, I would just not mind the extra weight of steel sleeves. The thickness wouldn't have to be that much because of block strength and servicability would be better IMHO. I guess I have spent to much of my life repairing others failed components and that is what I base my preference on.

[jeffrey jackson]

David will you be building turn key engines? Thanks Jeff

[craigayl]

David

Nice block...

It does not appear to have FE rocker shaft oiling. What will be the head/rocker oiling system?

Craig

[Murphy]

I want a line of Cobra furniture for my house. Lets start with the FE wood block stained a handsome mahogany with a smoked glass top for a coffee table?

[CobraBoy]

David,

One word. AWESOME! Kirkham raises the bar yet again!

Paul

[Excaliber]

It will be interesting to see how well the bore holds up. In that regard a couple of things come to mind. BMW sells a TON of bikes and many see some serious mileage, like police duty. The second thing is, how many of us put serious mileage on our Cobra? Very very few! If you plan on a 100K miles for your Cobra, you might consider other alternatives until Davids technology proves it's worth.

[What'saCobra?]

i'm no expert but...

My first experience with nikasil was on a 1975 or so BMW Daytona. At almost 100K it still had perfect oil control when i foolishly gave it away. Most of the BMW aly blocks are coated and unsleeved. It works just fine, with a very low failure rate. It's not cheap, but worth the money and still marginally less cost than sleeving with steel because of increasing labor costs, as opposed to the still-proprietary profit margins of coating.

There are not many down-sides. Break-in is a little longer than ductile iron rings on iron, of course, and a proper ring seat requires modest street rpm's for a while to increase the odds of a quick nice fit. Perhaps not as difficult or improbable as seating chrome rings properly, for instance. A handfull or two of careful dyno pulls will help establish a seal.

Aircraft cylinder jugs (aircooled like the Daytona, remember), respond well to bore coatings. It is a very long story, but now fairly well settled amongst many safety and cost-minded operators that overhauled jugs ought to be coated if the core engine has consumed less than half its useful life between overhauls.

i would agree that coated-bore aly blocks are the way to go, particularly for semi-street engines. i suspect, however, that the proprietary nature of the coating process makes it very important ragarding WHO does the coating and WHAT the history of THEIR coatings is and how financially stable and willing they are to insure warranty liabilities, including components installed in the block.

My bet is that the Kirkham guys will have this all properly covered long before they make any blocks available to the public.
----------------------------------
As daddy used to say:

There is certainly no strategic advantage to wedding an Albatross to a Harrier. The Albatross will be at least disappointed and the Harrier is likely to be very very angry.

[Power Surge]

I share the same feeling as Woodz428. I have been involved with the motorcycle industry for a long time (my brother has been a bike shop service manager for almost 20 years) and I have never seen a bike that had that setup. Mind you, my experiance has been with american V-twins, which always used sleeves. I have gotten into metric V-twins over the past few years, they use sleeves as well.

And to be completely honest, I have been doing high peformance auto work for many years, and this is the first I've even heard of this, and I'm no newbie. It can't be THAT common.

I would definitely have concerns over having a coated cylinder wall, vs a sleeve. At least with a sleeve, you can replace it. Even if the coating holds up, if there is any kind of engine failure (such as a dropped valve) and you damage the cylinder wall, is the block then junk? If you have a sleeve, you'd just replace the sleeve.

I'm not saying the coating is bad, but my personal feeling is that if I spent $5k on a block, I'd feel way better about it if it had some nice Darton sleeves in it.

[Excaliber]

Sal, Woodz, I think you guys are missing the main point of Davids motor, low weight. THAT is fundamental to the design, using sleeves would just not be logical in this endeavor due to the weight penalty. Like many exoctic applications one has to weigh the 'long term' risk against the benefit, for some this will be a thing of beauty!

As for bragging rights, a BILLET motor? Whoa, thats some serious 'talk story' headlines there, just look at THIS thread!

[Power Surge]

Originally Posted by Excaliber

Sal, Woodz, I think you guys are missing the main point of Davids motor, low weight. THAT is fundamental to the design, using sleeves would just not be logical in this endeavor due to the weight penalty. Like many exoctic applications one has to weigh the 'long term' risk against the benefit, for some this will be a thing of beauty!

As for bragging rights, a BILLET motor? Whoa, thats some serious 'talk story' headlines there, just look at THIS thread!

I understand not using sleeves keeps the weight down. I am just thinking out loud at some of the things this topic is making cross my mind.

I love to see the Kirkhams try new things. I would hate to see this block fail (either physically or sales wise) because of something not commonly used. I'd rather post my thoughts now before it's even made, and possibly have a chance of using that info to revise the design, then to see it hit production and fizzle out. That's not to say that the Kirkham's don't know what they are doing. But let's not forget what happened when they tried to make a fiberglass body .

[Igofastr]

I wouldn't worry too much about the ability of Nikisil to hold up. Many early Porsche motors used the Nikisil process, and held up for hundreds of thousands of miles. That stuff is TUFF. I have 40 yearold cylinders with a 100K miles on them that are absolutely spotless, and completely reusible without any treatment at all.

I now semi-look foreward to blowing up my motor, just to have an excuse to rebuild with a Kirkham block.

[mrmax]

I currently own a 2000cc vtwin kawasaki vulcan with this application. This is very new to vtwins. Some owners are experiencing 30k or so before jugs are shot, can't even be recoated. Seems that the biggest problem for v configured motors with longer strokes is excessive side forces at bottom of bores due to rod angles that exist in v type motors. Inlines and boxers it is not as big a problem. Ford actually tried this afew years ago calling it spray bore technology in trying to make a 4.6 displace 5.0. (no room for sleeves they said)