Million Dollar Skunksworks Kirkham

[David Kirkham]

Here are the differential side axles. Notice they are set up for CV joints. They are made out of 17-4 as well.

The original 427 Cobra had plunging 1/2 shafts which bound up seriously if you accelerated out of a corner while the suspension was still loaded. CV's were invented to solve that problem.

[David Kirkham]

Today Sandwich fitted the 1/2 shaft axles to the car. This is how you do it. You take a Porsche axle, cut it, put a sleeve over it and then fit it to the CV joints. You then hold the suspension at ride height and adjust the length of the axle so that the CV joints are 1/2 way through their plunge ON BOTH CV JOINTS!!! Tack weld. Rotate the hub to make sure nothing is binding AT FULL DROOP AND AT FULL BUMP. Measure the axle. Then MAKE IT! YEA!!! (But, just to be sure, you need to make it out of aluminum first )

[David Kirkham]

Then on to the good stuff...17-4 PH.

First, you spline the ends of the shaft. We are really lucky because we have a 3 axis lathe that can do splines.

Then, you can see Sandwich made a special "driver" to drive the splined end of the axle. We turn the axle between centers then. You have to make the splines first to that you can take ANY non-concentricity out of the axle when you make it. By turning between centers, the shaft is made really concentric.

This is our war horse Haas CNC lathe. It has seen some very hard use over the years and it still holds 0.0002 inches. I am pretty impressed with it. So much so, I bought 4 of them! And several mills too.

[lovehamr]

Originally Posted by David Kirkham

(But, just to be sure, you need to make it out of aluminum first )

Just make sure no one installs the aluminum one instead!

Beautifull work guys; keep it up!

Steve