Check this out: http://www.kirkhammotorsports.com/book_aoe

 

Jesus...Someday...sigh

 

This is one of the most amazing pieces of fabrication I've ever seen.
"Intelligent design" I can get behind.

Cubic money + real craftsmanship= goodness.

Now I have to relocate my jaw- it fell and can't get up...

 

that must be very expensive!

CNC aluminum chassis!!!!

wow!

 

There's a lot of CAD work that went into that thing. The things you can do behind the seat of a computer...

 

that's some high quality work. i don't think i would drive that, just stare.

 

Ridiculously Awesome. What a project. 2-1/2 years. Wowzer... I couldn't image the CAD time, tooling, materials, and engineering time that went into that thing.

I don't want to call it a waste, but I'm not sure what makes this car that much better than a tube chassis car? Is it that much lighter? Is it that more solid? Does it perform that much better? Or was this simply a 'look what I can do when money is no object' type of project?

It is incredible!

 

Impressive showing what one of the worlds richest men can have done by brut force. But that is what this is a brut force improvement over 1960's technology. Machined out of solid billet alumiuium because welding HT alumiun cuts strength in half and bolted together. Well yes; but then why not weld pre-heattreat and heat treat the struture after. Ellison had the money to buy Alcoa let along find an aluminum heat treater.

 

Thats not fabrication, thats engineering at its finest!

 

IIRC chassis stiffness is about 8x more than their tube frame cars.

Download and read the book. It's mostly pictures, but with some informative text.

 

From the Book,

"My favorite comment came from the head of the Miller Motorsports Driving School. After several hot laps, he said, “You know, with a Cobra you run out of chassis long before you run out of motor. With this car, I just kept pushing it harder and harder. I ran out of motor before I ran out of chassis. This has potential for a serious race car.” " That says something about the frame and suspension geometry...

I'm no engineer, but I would like to think it would be possible with enough gussets or bracing that you could get a similarly stiff tube chassis, but then again maybe not considering the aforementioned characteristics of welding of al. Maybe composites?

Anyway, I'm not going to debate whether or not this is an amazing piece of engineering and fabrication, because it is. I'd also like to add that it is a beautiful work of Art.

 

This is sweet! I wonder how many hours were involved in building this?

 

Simply amazing!

 

The panel beating the polish craftsmen do is infinitley more impressive... cad and the proper CNC tools can build that.... metalshaping can't be done by CNC....