Who's running a Jag rear and can you use the jag 1/2 shafts?

[David Kirkham]

ng8264723,

No, the Jaguar suspension will not work at all on our car. The only thing that will work in our car (or an original car for that matter) from an original Jaguar is the differential itself. We can not even use the Jaguar brakes as they are inboard brakes on a Jag. Original Cobras (and our car) both use outboard brakes.

I think this conversation is particularly interesting as someone told me even today they had spoken with another manufacturer's representative and they told him "original Cobras from 1962-1968 all came with solid axle rear ends in them. We even have a CSX4000 car in our shop right now. Kirkham cars also have the solid axle rear ends in them." Obviously, I was very surprised to hear that as most anyone who has done any research realizes original Cobras had true independent rear suspensions in them and of course, our cars do as well as we copied an original Cobra to make our Kirkham car.

There has been a lot of confusion over the years with this and what exactly came in an original car. Original differentials were "Salisbury" units. That is, Salisbury made the differential. The guts inside the differential are standard Dana 44 pieces. A period Jaguar differential is also a Salisbury unit. Even the little differentials in MGB's and such were Salisbury differentials. Of course, there were many different models. So, just because you have a "Salisbury" differential does not mean you have a Cobra differential.

As for Jaguar rear suspensions:

Jaguars use the 1/2 shaft as the upper control arm. It is a pretty bad design. You have to make the parts very heavy to make them able to stand the abuse--even in a normal car. An original Cobra (and our car) both have a true upper control arm with a plunging 1/2 shaft. The Jaguar 1/2 shaft/control arm combination can't plunge as the rear wheel would fold in if it did.

Finally, strange this all comes up at this time. Even today, we were all discussing simply dropping the Jaguar differential out of our options list as we sell very, very few of them. We would then put the Kirkham aluminum differential (copied off an original car) and 1/2 shafts in the base model and adjust the pricing.

David