1935 Miller/Ford Indy Cars

[mac miller]

Originally Posted by GMC BUBBA

Ryan,

Good choice of a name , congrats!!
I too am in love with the Miller Cars , living just down the street we see Miller influence every day. The 500 motel has one in the lobby and the 500 museum always has more than one. There are a couple of restorations going on in my neighborhood and I have a area glass guy making me a Miller Body for my Model T Ford Speedster to race at the annual Newport Hill climb. He has built a few of the replica bodies and they really are a work of art even on a t chassis.
He does two and single seat and mine is a single seat. i will provide picks as the mock up gets going.
Also i will look around Indy for something Miller for baby Millers wall...
You know a miller replica baby bed would be pretty far out, maybe a baby bed with a miller grill?? How about a tail section toy box ??
Let me see if Tom has any spares ?? hes lurking here somewhere anyway.....
McGriff jump in here !!!

Here ya go, Ryan. Here is a bunch of pix of the Miller style replicas that I build.......http://www.myrideisme.com/Garage/macmiller

mac miller in INDY

[Mac the Yankee]

37kid- thanks for the correction and sorry for the misinformation!

[racer5c]

Do yourself a favor go to the Milwaukee Miller Meet in July!!!!

[racer5c]

When I resize these i will post more

[whodaky]

On checking out this thread I thought I would get my books on Miller out and have a flick through them. thumbing through the book, The Marvelous Mechanical Designs of Harry A Miller by Gordon Eliot White, produced by Iconografix Book; I came across the Frank Lockhart, Stutz Black Hawk Specail and was inspired to do some striping.
By the way this is a must have book for any Miller enthusiast, featuring many great photographs!
Geoff aka whodaky

[4tl8ford]

A good article on Harry Miller

http://wisconsinhistory.org/wmh/pdf/spring02_gerber.pdf

[Cris]

"Restored" That's an interesting way of describing that particular car.

Originally Posted by Beach Bum

Here is a couple of photos of the rear drive 91 cu. in Miller Majestic Special that was restored by Bob Sutherland back in the 1980's.]

Cheers,
Kurt O.

[meangreen]

I love old race cars, especially the old Indy cars. In my opinion, it was the advent of rear-engine cars that eventually ruined Indy car racing...

Anyway, when I was a student at Indiana State University many years ago, we had a young instructor that occasionally drove an old two-seat Indy car to school! According to him, if memory serves me, it was built and raced with a Deusenberg engine in the 1930's. After WWII, the chrome grille shell was replaced with the round nose that was on it when I saw it. It supposedly was last raced at Indy in 1947 or '48. Then it sat for years with no engine. Finally, somebody put a flathead Ford V-8 and added lights, etc. to make it street legal. It was light metallic blue when I saw it, but that was not the original color. It would be interesting to know where it is now; it would be a good one to clone. As I recall, it had a shape similar to the Miller-Fords, but it was rear-wheel drive.

[Bruce Lancaster]

Next...is there any real info around on the factory related racing flatheads of the thirties, either these Millers or the stock car racing '32-34's??
On these Millers, I have NEVER found anything about the engines beyond what is visible externall...the oil coolers, magnetos, the two different intakes. What was inside??
The stock car racers were equally mysterious...completely stock on outside, stock enough inside to pass the mandatory but probably unsophisticated teardown...
The '33's in one race I have seen reports on lapped a split road/speedway track at about 80, topping out at exactly 100MPH on the long straight side. Probabbly not VERY tweaked to reach 100, but certainly noticeably hotter than a stock '33 with fenders discarded.
It would be fascinating to find out anything about Miller's and Ford's thoughts in this first-generation flathead work.

[Mac the Yankee]

Bruce,

What blows my mind is how quickly the early 21 stud flatheads ('33-'36) are passed up for not being easy to modify, etc. Now I know that speed parts for those blocks are hard to come by, but running at 80mph and taking the straights at 100mph for a distance race is pretty good in my book.

[fur biscuit]

Originally Posted by Cris

"Restored" That's an interesting way of describing that particular car.

Ah, you so funny! make big joke, haha!

in fact, I think that it was just "re-restored" after being sold, so it must be 100% correct now.

[Ryan]

Originally Posted by whodaky

On checking out this thread I thought I would get my books on Miller out and have a flick through them. thumbing through the book, The Marvelous Mechanical Designs of Harry A Miller by Gordon Eliot White, produced by Iconografix Book; I came across the Frank Lockhart, Stutz Black Hawk Specail and was inspired to do some striping.
By the way this is a must have book for any Miller enthusiast, featuring many great photographs!
Geoff aka whodaky

Brilliant.

[Bluto]

Here's my collection of stuff.........

Yes, The right stuff but just a collection of stuff

As you can see by the diff detail.

I sat in Ford's Ford it's a bunch smaller than you'd think........

[carl s]

1927 Boyle Valve Spl Miller 91 'Tribute' Racecar
just completed by Mac Miller Shop in Indy and shown at GGs 20th Hot Rod Nats @ Indy
After some track time in the Mid West it will go West to live in Indio, CA

[mac miller]

Originally Posted by carl s

1927 Boyle Valve Spl Miller 91 'Tribute' Racecar
just completed by Mac Miller Shop in Indy and shown at GGs 20th Hot Rod Nats @ Indy
After some track time in the Mid West it will go West to live in Indio, CA

More pix of this car and others at :

http://www.myrideisme.com/Garage/macmiller

[39cent]

hey the indy Miller woudnt be that hard to build it even has a flathead! cograts by the way

[Dean Lowe]

Originally Posted by Beach Bum

The Ford V8 Miller was built and run under what many refer to as the "junk formula". In 1929 Eddie Rickenbacker, head of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the AAA Contest Board (kind of like Tony George now), proposed a new set of rules for cars that competed on the National Championship Trail, that required the cars to be based more on production cars. The rules mandated the cars be two-seaters and use engines based on production engines. The idea being to get the engineers at the auto companies involved in developing racing cars and using the lessons learned on their production cars. Nice idea, but it coincided with the depression and pretty quick, most auto companies were struggling just to survive. This rule change really hammered Harry Miller in that all of his highly developed single seat race cars had no where to race.

One of Harry Miller's shop buildings still stands here in LA. I've seen photos of it on the net somewhere. I'll have to dig them up or maybe just go see if it's still there.

Many years ago I knew virtually nothing about Miller or early Indy car racing. I was fascinated with Grand Prix racing at the time. I used to hang out a lot at Autobooks in Burbank. The owner used to let me sell some of my photos there. One day I went in and there was a guy named Mark Dees giving a talk about a book he had just written about Harry Miller. Talk about having your eyes opened! I've been fascinated with Miller ever since.

Kurt O.

My Dad and I knew Mark Dees from our years in the SCTA. Mark had a law degree, and handled the legal affairs for BNI/SCTA in the 60's. Mark spent most of his time at the family ranch in Santa Paula living in a barn where he had a fabulous collection of Miller parts and drawings. He was a Harry Miller fanatic, and spent many years of his life doing research for the Miller Dynasty book. I feel very fortunate that he gave my Dad and I signed copies of the book, and would mail us adendums from time to time as he continued his research until he died. Tragically he was killed on highway 126 near Santa Paula by a drunk driver a few years ago.

[muroc 29]

Originally Posted by Weasel

Are these a continuation of the Miller pedal cars made by Richard Graves' Miracle Pedal Car Co in the mid 1990s? I was at his shop several times before and during production and, as I recall he had limited the run to 100 units only.

Your Miller gonna be a V16 Ryan? Congrats in advance of the happy event.

You are correct these are two of the 100 built by Richard Graves and Jack Plymell the bodies were hand formed aluminum by marcel and there were options such as polished frame and different paint schemes they where completed in 1991. The one pictured in the original thread is for sale now if any one is interested

[miller91]

I think this thread deserves some more pics

[The37Kid]

Just think if we had $10,000 in December 1949 we could have bought TWO of the MILLER/FORD cars!