Miller updraught

I have received a rather interesting photograph from Karl E Blochle of Zurich of his straight-eight Miller, showing the eight long air inlet pipes to the four dual carburettors, so long that they extended below the car’s left chassis side-member. When Count Zborowski brought his Miller to Brooklands in 1923, many people thought, before seeing it with bonnet opened, that these paired air intakes were stub exhausts.

Blochle makes the interesting point that if the Miller is used on the road, the float chambers fill on left-hand bends, making the mixture too rich, whereas on righthand corners the mixture is too lean. On board tracks or at Indianapolis (or indeed Brooklands), for which the Miller engines were intended, this would not apply, but the Miller’s carburetion is very involved, with a total of 40 jets, five per cylinder!

Karl intends to substitute four Zenith carburettors as did Zborowski for the French Grand Prix of 1924 and these should function much better.