1965 Harvey Aluminum Special indy car built around a titanium tube?

[LDO]

In another thread, Biscuitbuilder mentioned this car. I did a Google search and the car has an elliptical cross-section. Was the titanium tube under the elliptical bodywork? Was there another car that had a round cross-section?  Fascinating stuff, but I don't know Indy Car history.

 

Thanks. Lee

[Ace-Garageguy]

The June 1963 Hot Rod Magazine has a full writeup on the "rollerskate" car (the June '63 Road & Track has a comparison of Thompson's rollerskate and the Lotus 29 as well). August '62 Hot Rod has details of the more conventional looking Thompson/Harvey first-generation mid-engined car. There were developments over several years, and it can all get a little confusing...and there's no shortage of just flat wrong information floating around too...as usual.

The elliptical cross section was only the skin. The chassis was a relatively conventional tubular spaceframe, built of .050"-wall titanium tube.

Edited December 31, 2017 by Ace-Garageguy

[Ace-Garageguy]

The tube-frame cars as shown above were heavily modified and rebodied to become the 3 Sears Allstate Specials for 1964, running the Ford DOHC V8.

          

 

[moparfarmer]

Didn't the Harvey Aluminum Special run a Chevrolet engine?

 

[Richard Bartrop]

14 minutes ago, moparfarmer said:

Didn't the Harvey Aluminum Special run a Chevrolet engine?

 

It ran a Buick.

[Mark]

The "titanium tube" car was not the same one as those pictured.  I believe it was built for the '65 race.  If I'm remembering right, the tube (huge diameter) functioned as the fuel tank and everything else (driver, engine, suspension) hung off of the tube.  The engine was an aluminum small-block Chevy with most external parts (including fuel injection) fabricated by Thompson.  A HOT ROD Indy preview article showed the car under construction.  

The car didn't qualify: a recent HOT ROD Deluxe photo article on racing in 1965 mentioned that the Thompson car was given the wrong fuel blend (very likely on purpose) for qualifying laps and fried the engine.  An accompanying photo in the article shows another team's pit blackboard with "fire all California engineers" scrawled on it.  Thompson was a pariah at Indy following the '64 first-lap crash, which a number of Indy insiders blamed on him.  He pretty much walked away from Indy after '65.     

[Ace-Garageguy]

13 hours ago, Richard Bartrop said:

It ran a Buick.

 

6 hours ago, Mark said:

The "titanium tube" car was not the same one as those pictured.  I believe it was built for the '65 race.  If I'm remembering right, the tube (huge diameter) functioned as the fuel tank and everything else (driver, engine, suspension) hung off of the tube.  The engine was an aluminum small-block Chevy with most external parts (including fuel injection) fabricated by Thompson.  A HOT ROD Indy preview article showed the car under construction.  

The car didn't qualify: a recent HOT ROD Deluxe photo article on racing in 1965 mentioned that the Thompson car was given the wrong fuel blend (very likely on purpose) for qualifying laps and fried the engine.  An accompanying photo in the article shows another team's pit blackboard with "fire all California engineers" scrawled on it.  Thompson was a pariah at Indy following the '64 first-lap crash, which a number of Indy insiders blamed on him.  He pretty much walked away from Indy after '65.     

This is what I mean about all the wrong information floating around.

The 1962 Harvey Aluminum cars ran Buicks  (there were three), and looked relatively conventional for a mid-engined formula car, shown below.

For the 1963 Harvey Aluminum "rollerskate" cars (blue, as shown in the post above and the cutaway drawing, all with tubular frames as shown, but only one of titanium) the Buick engines were replaced with smallblock Chevy engines.

In '63, two of the earlier cars also ran with Chevy V8 engines, but under the "Harcraft" banner (a marketing division of Harvey Aluminum).

 

The 1963 "rollerskate" cars were substantially modified and rebuilt as the Sears Allstate Specials for 1964, and had Ford 4-cam engines based on aluminum Fairlane bottom-ends. The red one is shown in the post above, next to the blue Harvey car it was built from (actually, the red Allstate #83 car was not on the titanium chassis...the #82 Allstate car was...).

For 1965, there was no Harvey Aluminum-sponsored car listed either in the finishers OR the failed-to-qualify list.

Micky Thompson's 1965 Indy entry, the M/T Challenger Wheel Special (black & white photo below) was an entirely new design again, front-engined (Chevrolet-derived), front-wheel-drive, and uncompetitive for several possible reasons, all of which have been argued endlessly. According to race accounts from the period, and not with 50 years of hindsight and speculation clouding things, the crankshaft in the last qualifying engine broke as the car was almost up to a respectable speed. As both alcohol AND gasoline fuels were run in the '65 race, it's not inconceivable that a fuel mixup might have occurred, but I feel it's unlikely. The engine in Thompson's car had suffered from development problems, the program was behind schedule, and they just ran out of time before getting it right.

Honestly, I do NOT know much about the chassis of this design. It's entirely possible Harvey Aluminum was involved with the project, as they were also involved with the casting of Thompson's other products and special parts, but without a definitive reference source, I'll keep silent on what I believe the chassis to be. 

Thompson skipped 1966 at Indy, but was heavily involved  in 1967 with another radical design incorporating 3-valve-per-chamber heads on a Chevy bottom end. The Wynn's-sponsored front-engined roadster also failed to qualify, as did Thompson's '68 entry.

 

 

Edited December 31, 2017 by Ace-Garageguy

[Ace-Garageguy]

This image appears to be an early engineering / concept drawing of the 1965 Thompson FWD roadster. It would also appear that the radiator ducting is being designed here, to clear a reversed quick-change final drive assembly, driving the front wheels.

The May 1965 Hot Rod Magazine article (page 44)shows the car nekkid, and it is definitely a conventional tubular space-frame, not some black-magic single titanium tube as has been alluded to. Still, I await independent corroboration.

A too-hot nitro load for the last round of qualifying is cited in the Hot Rod Deluxe article, and could have conceivably contributed to the crank breaking, but at this point in history, I seriously doubt we'll ever really know. There has been so much discussion of the relative merits and failures of these cars, and so much written and talked about that has no basis in fact whatsoever, and quotes from M.T. himself describing how the deck was time and time again stacked against him (much of what he said is verifiably true), that arguing with nothing but memories to back up the positions of people who weren't there is pointless.

 

Edited January 2, 2018 by Ace-Garageguy

[Belugawrx]

Hm...and he sounded so sure of it,....

[Ace-Garageguy]

9 minutes ago, Belugawrx said:

Hm...and he sounded so sure of it,....

I'm not saying the assertion is completely wrong, as I just don't know. I really do NOT claim to know everything. But I DO know a pretty fair bit about structures, and until I see a photograph of one huge tube used as a race-car chassis, I'll have to refuse to believe it.

What I DO know is that none of the cars cited above were based on big titanium tubes.

I would hazard a guess that somebody not familiar with race car construction misinterpreted the phrase "titanium tube chassis" to mean one big tube, when it in fact means a conventional tubular chassis fabricated from small diameter titanium tubes.

Interestingly though, a monocoque chassis with a roughly circular or ovoid cross-section CAN be loosely thought of as being a big tube. Aircraft fuselages and missiles are built that way too. BUT...in that case, the "tube" is built up of multiple alloy sheets bonded or riveted together, and it's necessary to include box-sections and ribs / bulkheads, as a pure tube has poor strength in bending if its walls are not adequately supported, either by the thickness of the material, or by box-section and rib / bulkhead elements.

Below is a drawing of an early Lotus monocoque chassis built up from aluminum sheet, into a rough approximation of a "tube".

 

[LDO]

Lots of information here. Before I posted, I wondered if there was some missile with an elliptical cross-section, or maybe a fuel tank. Tubular space frame sounds more plausible. 

It must have been a heck of a thing to see so much innovation, so many different ideas about how to build a race car back then.

[Art Anderson]

On 12/31/2017 at 5:09 PM, LDO said:

Lots of information here. Before I posted, I wondered if there was some missile with an elliptical cross-section, or maybe a fuel tank. Tubular space frame sounds more plausible. 

It must have been a heck of a thing to see so much innovation, so many different ideas about how to build a race car back then.

Back to Mickey Thompson's Challenger Wheel Spl.  As I stated early on, this car had a chassis  that began with a length of titanium tubing, about 12-14 inches in diameter.   It was not monocoque construction, the body surfaces you see in photo's of it were separate from the chassis.  It was also front-wheel drive, the last one ever entered at Indianapolis, a driveline layout not seen at the Speedway since the last of the front-drive Novi's faild to qualify in 1955.

[Art Anderson]

On 12/31/2017 at 4:37 PM, Ace-Garageguy said:

I'm not saying the assertion is completely wrong, as I just don't know. I really do NOT claim to know everything. But I DO know a pretty fair bit about structures, and until I see a photograph of one huge tube used as a race-car chassis, I'll have to refuse to believe it.

What I DO know is that none of the cars cited above were based on big titanium tubes.

I would hazard a guess that somebody not familiar with race car construction misinterpreted the phrase "titanium tube chassis" to mean one big tube, when it in fact means a conventional tubular chassis fabricated from small diameter titanium tubes.

Interestingly though, a monocoque chassis with a roughly circular or ovoid cross-section CAN be loosely thought of as being a big tube. Aircraft fuselages and missiles are built that way too. BUT...in that case, the "tube" is built up of multiple alloy sheets bonded or riveted together, and it's necessary to include box-sections and ribs / bulkheads, as a pure tube has poor strength in bending if its walls are not adequately supported, either by the thickness of the material, or by box-section and rib / bulkhead elements.

Below is a drawing of an early Lotus monocoque chassis built up from aluminum sheet, into a rough approximation of a "tube".

 

Bill, the Challenger Wheel Special was documented rather widely in the racing press in the spring of 1965, and was constructed pretty as I described.    What you posted is essentially the layout of a Lotus, fabricated in aluminum.  However, Mickey Thompson's entries (1963-66) were always "interesting", he not having available to him of aircraft-style monocoque construction, as well as being somewhat of a maverick hot rodder, in the eyes of the racing establishment.

[Ace-Garageguy]

2 hours ago, Art Anderson said:

Back to Mickey Thompson's Challenger Wheel Spl.  As I stated early on, this car had a chassis  that began with a length of titanium tubing, about 12-14 inches in diameter.   It was not monocoque construction, the body surfaces you see in photo's of it were separate from the chassis.  It was also front-wheel drive, the last one ever entered at Indianapolis, a driveline layout not seen at the Speedway since the last of the front-drive Novi's faild to qualify in 1955.

 

2 hours ago, Art Anderson said:

Bill, the Challenger Wheel Special was documented rather widely in the racing press in the spring of 1965, and was constructed pretty as I described.    What you posted is essentially the layout of a Lotus, fabricated in aluminum.  However, Mickey Thompson's entries (1963-66) were always "interesting", he not having available to him of aircraft-style monocoque construction, as well as being somewhat of a maverick hot rodder, in the eyes of the racing establishment.

Art, as I said, when I see a photograph of the chassis built as you describe, I'll believe it...but not until then.

Thompson was a hero of mine growing up, is largely responsible for why I refuse to accept that just because something hasn't been done before, that's no reason to say it CAN'T be done (as long as basic common sense and understanding of engineering and material principles are part of the equation too) and I know most of his cars inside-out...other than the '65 FWD car and the '67 development of the FWD concept (to which he added 4-wheel steering, to make it even more "interesting").

As far as what I posted above being "essentially the layout of a Lotus", well yeah...I'm fully aware of that and I named it as such in my own text.

We've had disagreements about several technical and historical issues in the past, and I've always been able to back my position with reputable sources and documentation.

And again, I said I didn't discount the "large titanium tube" business, but that until I see PROOF, I'll not believe it.

But if anybody would have built something so unusual, it would have been Thompson.

 

 

 

[Art Anderson]

24 minutes ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

 

Art, as I said, when I see a photograph of the chassis built as you describe, I'll believe it...but not until then.

Thompson was a hero of mine growing up, is largely responsible for why I refuse to accept that just because something hasn't been done before, that's no reason to say it CAN'T be done (as long as basic common sense and understanding of engineering and material principles are part of the equation too) and I know most of his cars inside-out...other than the '65 FWD car and the '67 development of the FWD concept (to which he added 4-wheel steering, to make it even more "interesting").

As far as what I posted above being "essentially the layout of a Lotus", well yeah...I'm fully aware of that and I named it as such in my own text.

We've had disagreements about several technical and historical issues in the past, and I've always been able to back my position with reputable sources and documentation.

And again, I said I didn't discount the "large titanium tube" business, but that until I see PROOF, I'll not believe it.

But if anybody would have built something so unusual, it would have been Thompson.

 

 

 

Bill, the car in question AND it's tubular "chassis" is mentioned in this article:    https://books.google.com/books?id=LyYDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA196&lpg=PA196&dq=mickey+thompson+1965+indy+car&source=bl&ots=bAagLi6rKo&sig=DyuAJKOagbuoVsqayIKpyr1bKBQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiN0YSkxLnYAhXDSN8KHSGlAMc4ChDoAQhcMAE#v=onepage&q=mickey thompson 1965 indy car&f=false

[Ace-Garageguy]

Thanks for the link, Art.

It states Thompson's car "has a large titanium tube running the full length of the car on the right. The fuel tanks are inside it, and the seat and engine are carried by supporting framework".

This is a direct word-for-word quote from the article. 

It sounds like the large-diameter titanium tube may well be a significant part of the structure (though it would HAVE to be offset far to the right of centerline to allow the low engine placement seen in the photos of the exterior), with a tubular space-frame of conventional design making up the remainder of the structure.

As I noted above, Eric Rickman's article "Little Cars for the Big Race" on page 44 of the   May 1965 Hot Rod Magazine   (one of the few missing from my collection) has more info. Does anyone here have that issue?

Here's a link to a photo of Rickman's that is implied to be of the car during construction. http://www.hotrod.com/articles/hrxp-1205-a-year-in-the-life-of-eric-rickman-1965/#hrxp-1205-a-year-in-the-life-of-eric-rickman-1965-061

Scroll to photo 22/76. If this is in fact the car in question, it appears to be largely a space-frame...though what's actually on the other side is impossible to tell from this shot.

EDIT: It looks like we're still lacking anything definitive in photographic evidence. On closer examination of the photo, it appears to me to NOT be a shot of Thompson's '65 car. It does NOT appear to be front-wheel-drive, it has NO visible front half-shafts, and it has a large centrifugal supercharger. There is what appears to be a transfer case at the REAR of the engine, and a driveshaft running to the REAR of the car.

 

Edited January 2, 2018 by Ace-Garageguy

[Art Anderson]

5 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

Thanks for the link, Art.

It states Thompson's car "has a large titanium tube running the full length of the car on the right. The fuel tanks are inside it, and the seat and engine are carried by supporting framework".

This is a direct word-for-word quote from the article. 

It sounds like the large-diameter titanium tube may well be a significant part of the structure (though it would HAVE to be offset far to the right of centerline to allow the low engine placement seen in the photos of the exterior), with a tubular space-frame of conventional design making up the remainder of the structure.

As I noted above, Eric Rickman's article "Little Cars for the Big Race" on page 44 of the   May 1965 Hot Rod Magazine   (one of the few missing from my collection) has more info. Does anyone here have that issue?

Here's a link to a photo of Rickman's that is implied to be of the car during construction. http://www.hotrod.com/articles/hrxp-1205-a-year-in-the-life-of-eric-rickman-1965/#hrxp-1205-a-year-in-the-life-of-eric-rickman-1965-061

Scroll to photo 22/76. If this is in fact the car in question, it appears to be largely a space-frame...though what's actually on the other side is impossible to tell from this shot.

EDIT: It looks like we're still lacking anything definitive in photographic evidence. On closer examination of the photo, it appears to me to NOT be a shot of Thompson's '65 car. It does NOT appear to be front-wheel-drive, it has NO visible front half-shafts, and it has a large centrifugal supercharger. There is what appears to be a transfer case at the REAR of the engine, and a driveshaft running to the REAR of the car.

 

Bill, I should have looked closer at the pic before sharing it.   The website had ID'd as the Mickey Thompson car, but in looking at it, it's one of the two STP Novi's that were built to Ferguson 4WD design,  pretty much copied from the 1963 Harry Ferguson car.  It's a 4 wheel drive chassis.

[Ace-Garageguy]

13 minutes ago, Art Anderson said:

Bill, I should have looked closer at the pic before sharing it.   The website had ID'd as the Mickey Thompson car, but in looking at it, it's one of the two STP Novi's that were built to Ferguson 4WD design,  pretty much copied from the 1963 Harry Ferguson car.  It's a 4 wheel drive chassis.

 Yes, the Hot Rod Deluxe article mis-identifies the shot, implying it's the Thompson car. The same article also states that a fuel mixture mistake resulted in an engine failure on the warmup lap, but an account of the '65 Indy meet published at the time states the crank broke in the last, strongest-running of three qualifying engines...during a qualifying attempt. Hard to know exactly WHAT to believe sometimes.

Anyway, I'm so curious now about the whole "large diameter titanium tube" thing that I'm going to keep looking for a definitive photo. Surely there's something somewhere. 

Thompson WAS a great innovator, but if he had a shortcoming, it was a tendency to try too much new and unproven stuff on a single car, and that would seem to be the thing that bit him in the butt during his time at Indy. The power players didn't make it any easier for him though, as the "rollerskate" car was designed to run 12" rims with special tires, and when the ruling class banned them, the 15" wheels and vastly taller tires he was forced to use simply spoiled the car's handling...and he and his crew never got it back.

Edited January 2, 2018 by Ace-Garageguy

[Art Anderson]

4 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

 Yes, the Hot Rod Deluxe article mis-identifies the shot, implying it's the Thompson car. The same article also states that a fuel mixture mistake resulted in an engine failure on the warmup lap, but an account of the '65 Indy meet published at the time states the crank broke in the last, strongest-running of three qualifying engines...during a qualifying attempt. Hard to know exactly WHAT to believe sometimes.

Anyway, I'm so curious now about the whole "large diameter titanium tube" thing that I'm going to keep looking for a definitive photo. Surely there's something somewhere. 

Thompson WAS a great innovator, but if he had a shortcoming, it was a tendency to try too much new and unproven stuff on a single car, and that would seem to be the thing that bit him in the butt during his time at Indy. The power players didn't make it any easier for him though, as the "rollerskate" car was designed to run 12" rims with special tires, and when the ruling class banned them, the 15" wheels and vastly taller tires he was forced to use simply spoiled the car's handling...and he and his crew never got it back.

Another, but small pic of the car in question.  Notice the offset in the bodywork, placing the driver to the left?  That side was where that titanium tube (which memory is trying tell me was about 12" in diameter) tube was,  It held the fuel (and I believe also the on-board oil tank), and formed pretty much the backbone of the chassis.  The car was more than a crazy idea--front wheel drive had not made the 500 since 1953 or so, when the last front-drive Novi qualified.  The positioning of the engine pretty much precluded using a "conventional" Joe Hunt portable electric starter, so it had to be ramped up onto a starting "platform" by it's front wheels, and secured somehow, while starter "rollers" spun the front wheels to fire up the engine.

 

[anowka]

This photo clearly shows the unique titanium tube used in Mickey Thompson's 1965 Indy 500 car.    Hopefully it helps anyone building it from scratch.  

-Andy

[Ace-Garageguy]

^^^ Wow. Finally, a photo of a real unicorn. Great shot, and many thanks. What publication is that in?

[anowka]

I found it in this Clymer 1965 Indianapolis 500 Yearbook.  Article has 4-5 pics on page 50.   Let me know if you want to see more of the pics.   -Andy

[Straightliner59]

I'd like to see them, please! Cool thread, this!

[anowka]

Here are a few more pictures.  -Andy

[anowka]

One last picture with Mickey next to the car. What a creative racer!   Andy