Million Dollar Skunksworks Kirkham

[RedBarchetta]

I wish I had your customer's money. I'd be driving my Kirkham by now.

I think it's neat that someone has the drive to create a one-off like this, and found the right manufacturer to pull it off. Too bad most who see it won't appreciate the engineering and effort required to make it all work.

-Dean

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by RedBarchetta

I wish I had your customer's money. I'd be driving my Kirkham by now.

I think it's neat that someone has the drive to create a one-off like this, and found the right manufacturer to pull it off. Too bad most who see it won't appreciate the engineering and effort required to make it all work.

-Dean

Dean,

I can say that I feel we are truly fortunate to have a customer who really let us go to create what we wanted. He is really saying that "I know you will come up with a cool car and here is the money to do it." It really put an enormous amount of pressure on us. I doubt many people will actually see the car once it is done. It will go and keep his other cars company. That may be sad on the one hand. On the other hand, he is really into engineering and such. He knows how much work this has been. If he is happy, then I will be happy and nothing else really matters.

David

[Hoofa]

David,

What do you guys use for software? Solidworks?

[David Kirkham]

Cosmos
Solidworks
Surfcam
Rhino
OMAX
Camworks

[David Kirkham]

Speaking of CAD software, we have been really impressed with Solidworks. I must caution readers, however, Solidworks is a resource hog and you must have an extremely high performance computer to drive it effectively--especially when you get large assemblies. We use twin dual-core Opterons made by AMD. Without such computing power, you will spend most of your day waiting for the parts to render.

Also, the 2008 software version of Solidworks is not debugged very well and it sucks for stability. So, you need to SAVE OFTEN because it crashes often!

Back to the being impressed part. We have really been impressed with the part fitment. Obviously, we have made many, many parts and they ALL LINE UP! All the holes, all the edges, all the corners. Frankly, I have been very, very surprised that what we drew on the computer is really what we got out of the machine--even after long strings of parts are bolted together.

David

[mr bruce]

Did you machine the flat plate from billit. And how did you machine the square holes in the down tubes? I'd love to see the tooling for that process.

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by mr bruce

Did you machine the flat plate from billit. And how did you machine the square holes in the down tubes? I'd love to see the tooling for that process.

I am not sure what you mean "Did we machine the flat plate from billet." We machined the parts from plate aluminum that we bought.

The down tubes already have square holes in them because they are tubes. If you are asking if we machined the square holes down the tubes, then no, we just used aluminum tubing. But, I guess we could have machined the square holes if we would have wanted to. I am not sure answered your question???

David

[1ntCobra]

Me thinks Mr Bruce is messing with you.

I'm not sure there was ever a claim that every single piece of the finished car will be made from billet aluminum, but perhaps that is what he thinks.