2. Hobbies

Miller Sports Racer - 2018-2019 Restoration

Sadly, Diane's beloved Miller Sports Racer had a freak "incident" at our Race Against Kids' Cancer in August of 2018. You ain't gonna' believe this; it got rolled being towed back to the pits. Long sad story. Knackered it pretty good, all body work and frame were damaged. Diane was unhurt because she remained fully belted up in the car!  

It was decided to simply do another full ground up restoration on the car. A full restoration was done back in 2000, but that was 18 years ago now (Can't believe it!). Since then Diane has done 100 plus race weekends on the car!  So rather than just patch up the damage, it will be taken down to the bare frame to refresh everything. This gallery follows that project.

If interested, here is the video taken by the track's video system from the paddock, showing the tow truck headed back to the paddock when "oops" happened.

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When it rolled, the body work took a hits on all four corners. The big body damage was to the left rear, actually caused when the car rolled backwards into the tow truck after rolling. That little insult to injury also broke the left rear upright, bent trailing arms, the shock. All easily repaired or replaced.
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When it rolled, the body work took a hits on all four corners. The big body damage was to the left rear, actually caused when the car rolled backwards into the tow truck after rolling. That little insult to injury also broke the left rear upright, bent trailing arms, the shock. All easily repaired or replaced.

  • When it rolled, the body work took a hits on all four corners. The big body damage was to the left rear, actually caused when the car rolled backwards into the tow truck after rolling. That little insult to injury also broke the left rear upright, bent trailing arms, the shock. All easily repaired or replaced.
  • No structural damage to the front. But the left front fiberglass fender took a hit.
  • The car hit hard on the left corner of the roll bar when it turned over. That pushed the rollbar down into the frame, causing some frame tube damage
  • Since there was no frame issue to correct at the front, a fellow club members, Brian Weaver, was enlisted to make the fiberglass repairs to the front bonnet. This show the left front which got the worst of damage to the front bonnet. It's shown here in its rough repair status. He brought it over to double check for any fitment issues. There were none.
  • So Brian went ahead and finished it to primer. Paint will have to wait for the rear bonnet to be repaired. That will have to wait for quite a while because all the frame damage at the rear needs to be fixed first. Then the rear bonnet can be re-fitted, repaired, and then finished. Then all pieces can be repainted.
  • Now the restoration begins. Step #1, remove drive train.
  • Step #2 - Put the chassis on the roll-around work stand and start stripping parts.
  • Empty engine bay. Note the knackered left rear being held together with a ratchet strap. That allows it to at least be roller around on the ground (to get in in the trailer at the track, and in the shop). Half shafts already removed.
  • Here's the left rear without the ratchet strap clearly showing the broken upright. Luckily the upright is a clean, easily repaired break. That is, easy for a professional welder.
  • Left side body sill now removed.
  • All rear suspension and rear do-dads now removed.
  • Right side sill and fuel tank removed.
  • All front suspension, radiator, steering, hydraulics, and pedals now on the floor or in a box.
  • Now to remove all the cockpit items. Only about 1 million pop rivets to drill out to remove all the aluminum panels.
  • It's now a bare frame, ready to go to Blast-Tech to have it blasted back to bare metal.
  • Another view of the bare frame.
  • Close up of frame damage. When the car rolled, the "roll bar" did its thing! Note the big dent where it hit the ground pretty hard. The roll bar held up very well, but did push down and deform frame members at its base where mounted to frame. But only about 1/2". Turns out many other tubes in the rear frame were bent (over the years) and many others were simply old and rotten. So, the project was taken to a whole 'nuther level.
  • All clean, all frame bits back from being blasted to bare metal.
  • To insure good fit after frame repairs are done, a dummy engine block and tranny are provided to help with frame repairs.
  • The decision was made to "simply" rebuild the back half of the car with fresh new tubing. There was a lot of internal tube corrosion and issues of frame squareness. Easier/better to just build it new. So this is the start of a "new beginning" for the car. Everything back of cockpit was cut off to start over from roll bar bulkhead back.
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