Kirkham Assembly Manual - Questions Thread...

[SumFun]

Wow - nice job. Where is the car now? We have seen one very similiar to it here in WA state. Where did you get the aluminum body from? You guys have done a really nice job.

[David Kirkham]

big-boss,

We install bypassing fuel pressure regulators on any of our own cars. It is not original, but like many original things, they need to be thrown out the window. I highly recommend them as they greatly reduce vapor lock and boiling the fuel in the bowls and making carbs running like crap. The bypassing fuel system is complicated. I will take a picture of the entire system when I can get a car around here. I will do it on the next Miller Motorsports car that we do. That will be a couple of weeks.

A brief description is as follows:

We run the fuel from the gas tank to the fuel filter (on cars that get that option) -electric fuel pump-mechanic fuel pump-carb-fuel pressure bypassing regulator-fuel tank.

Trimming the tunnel is wrong. You have to unbolt the e brake lever to take the tunnel out. It is not that hard to do. You only have to unbolt the through bolt. But, who cares! No big deal. I wouldn't worry one little bit about it...but you can always call next time

Bluedog,

No, we don't level out the engine because we already did that when we made the mounts. We just bolt them in now.

We did mount our new slave cylinder throw out bearing assembly to this engine. It is NOT a hydraulic throw out bearing--it is a mechanical throw out bearing assembly with a lever that is actuated by a hydraulic slave cylinder. There are less headaches with this one because they DON'T leak!!! If they do, you simply change the slave cylinder and you don't have to take the seats, tunnel, (along with the ebrake handle), drive shaft, and transmission out! There are lots of pictures of it on the build blog and here is another one.

[David Kirkham]

Dean,

The actual dropping in the motor is only 10 minutes. Getting the motor ready to drop in is about 8 hours however! There are so many things that the engine builder doesn't do. Make the coil wire, bolt on the carb, bolt on the turkey pan, bolt on the clutch, pressure plate, flywheel, pilot bearing, oil pressure sending unit, oil temperature sending unit, water temperature sending unit, throttle linkage, dial in the bell housing, change the input shaft on the tranny, bolt on the tranny, change the shifter, hook up the bypassing fuel regulator, etc, etc, etc. (All future topics coming up!) Then, hooking it all up takes a lot of time. (But we are working hard to MINIMIZE that time as much as possible.) There are a million things to hook up.

We never place anything on the body work for several reasons.

It is impossible to find a clean towel, cover, whatever, to cover the fenders with. If there is any dirt, shavings, crap, gremlins, whatever, hiding in the cover it will scratch the car. So, we just don't touch the body work when we are installing the motor. If you look closely at the pictures of my guys, you can see they only touch the body wherever there is a tube that connects the body to the chassis. Covers invite people to set things on them--like wrenches, parts, etc. With no cover, no one puts anything on them.

The angle you are looking at the chains on the spreader bar is deceiving. The spreader we use was specifically made to be quite a bit WIDER than the valve covers. There is NO WAY the chains can touch the valve covers during the install. Wrapping cloths just takes up time finding them and putting the on. It is MUCH better to simply make the spreader bar such that it is impossible to scratch the valve covers in the first place.

Funny, I always thought changing out the input shaft was not too difficult--until I posted all of the steps required!

David

[David Kirkham]

SumFun,

Thank you for your kind words! We have a few cars in Washington now. We are the manufacturer of the cars. We make our aluminum bodies in an old MiG fighter factory in Poland.

David

[Bluedog]

David,
Is dropping the engine and tranny now a service option at Kirkham now? It seems you are doing this more and more...Rahal, Miller, etc. It would be a great option to offer but I'm not sure how you would get around legal/safety questions for street cars because you would essentially be automobile manufacturer.

[JJCobra]

David- What clutch line size do you use to plumb the hydraulic throwout bearing? Is it a -4 to a -3, or a -3 to a -4.

Your build and question thread is helping immensely. Keep it up!

Jason