Million Dollar Skunksworks Kirkham

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by slider701

The real trick would be to adapt Ford's capless fuel door that was introduced on the Ford GT and is now standard on most 2009/2010 Ford products

Hmmmm, I'll think about this one too.

David

[Ronbo]

David, well done on the book. Lots of pictures and not too much jibber-jabber as Mr. T would say.

I see a set of CV's in my future, glad to see you adopted this into the cars.

I'm curious what your thoughts are about a modified tunnel design for the existing frame that would help stiffen the chassis? (for the production cars) I'm sure there are other weak spots (like the frame rails being so far inboard), but it seems like the tunnel could provide a large improvement to chassis stiffness without impacting the originality too badly. (especially since it's covered in carpet anyway)

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by Ronbo

David, well done on the book. Lots of pictures and not too much jibber-jabber as Mr. T would say.

I see a set of CV's in my future, glad to see you adopted this into the cars.

I'm curious what your thoughts are about a modified tunnel design for the existing frame that would help stiffen the chassis? (for the production cars) I'm sure there are other weak spots (like the frame rails being so far inboard), but it seems like the tunnel could provide a large improvement to chassis stiffness without impacting the originality too badly. (especially since it's covered in carpet anyway)

There is really nothing that can be done to the tunnel on our cars to make the chassis any stiffer. The best that can be done is to put a tubular backbone under the tunnel--connecting the differential box on the chassis to the down tubes by the foot boxes--like was done on the Daytona Coupe. The problem here, however, is the down tubes are not very strong and there probably wouldn't be much to gain. On the other hand, even a little improvement in chassis stiffness is a big help.

David

[lloyds1]

Just out of curiosity, why didn't you use Brembo or AP calipers & carbon ceramic rotors? I'm sure none of the super cars that you put on the lift had Wilwood brakes.

Other than that, I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!

I just bought my first cobra (superformance), but I cant wait to upgrade to one of your cars in a few years.

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by lloyds1

Just out of curiosity, why didn't you use Brembo or AP calipers & carbon ceramic rotors? I'm sure none of the super cars that you put on the lift had Wilwood brakes.

Other than that, I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!

I just bought my first cobra (superformance), but I cant wait to upgrade to one of your cars in a few years.

Thanks for the kind words. You ask a very good question. Obviously, we could have used any brake caliper we wanted. The original vision of the car was to have it look as original as possible from the exterior. Therefore, we were constrained to use 15 inch rims. There is very little space on the inside of the 15 inch rims.

Also, we wanted to use the largest diameter rotor that was possible. We used a 12.19 inch diameter rotor which leave precious little room for anything else.

The problem came with the ebrake caliper. If you look at most ebrake systems, they are extremely heavy and bulky. There was no ebrake system from a Brembo we could get to fit that was reasonably light. Our ebrake system is extremely light and compact. The particular design of the Wilwood rear caliper allows us to remove a spacer and to place in an adapter that will hold the ebrake caliper unit...much like an original car's set up.

As for ceramic--again the problem was with the diameter of the wheel. There are no 12.2 inch rotors that we could find. We even went so far as to call the guys in England that make the rotors. All of their rotors are for rims that are much larger in diameter.

David