James Diedrich Hallum, 5/18/32 - 7/19/16
In another big loss for the old-timers of Seattle Outboard and Region 10, Jim Hallum died yesterday from non-smoker's lung cancer. This took him very quickly, which is fortunate, but a few of his old friends were able to talk to him first.
Jim was the oldest of three children born to Valdemir and Lillian Hallum, and is survived by his younger sisters Mary and Karen and their families. His dad Val (b. 1908), a great guy remembered by some of us, was a dairy farmer before he retired, but had started in his own father's business, Seattle Oxygen Supply. Val was also an outboard racer, starting before WW2. He raced KRs in A hydro with such local notables as Chuck Hickling, Lin Ivey, Dick Polk, Jack Livie, and Leonard Keller, our hardware supplier and one of Val's particular pals.
Jim was exceptionally mechanically talented from early on, and in high school was racing control-line model planes, even building his own engine on a lathe in the Tolt High School shop. Jim graduated from Tolt High (Carnation, WA) in 1950, but not before he was working on his dad's racing equipment even as Val was going to the airplane meets with him. There is a wonderful photo (which I hope to get scanned and reproduced here) of young Jim driving his dad's boat in his one and only race, which he won, coming out of a turn in front with an enormous grin on his face.
Jim entered the Engineering program at the Univ. of Washington after high school; he was delayed by illness, but graduated in 1957 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering.
At some point in the Fifties, the parents of a young racer, Gerry Walin, who had heard of Jim's abilities, asked if he could get some more power out of Jerry's KR. This started a long association of the engineer Jim and the driver and boat-builder Gerry.
Also somewhere in the early-mid-Fifties, Jim had obtained a Tenney Red-Head pulse-jet model engine manufactured by engineer/inventor/industrialist and racer Bill Tenney in the Midwest. Having built a couple of airframes to carry this screaming powerplant, and having gotten his best plane to making laps in the 130 to 150mph range, local champion racer Jim traveled to a big national meet in the Midwest. For some reason Jim had another fellow fly the plane, and it didn't quite perform at its best, but after the races Jim and Bill Tenney got together and talked pulse-jets, engineering, . . . and Anzani racing outboards, for which Tenney was the U.S. importer.
So at some time in the late 1950's we think, or maybe 1960 (nobody can remember any of this exactly anymore), Jim and Gerry began racing and developing the A and B Anzani. Lee Sutter was another SOA Anzani pioneer at about the same time (and we hope he will help correct and add to any of this!). Another essential figure in this period was another young engineer, Russ Rotzler, who had been working with Hu Entrop and who himself occasionally raced one of Entrop's early cabovers. Russ would visit Jim when he was building an engine and bounce ideas off him, which frequently appeared in the next-version racemotor.
Jim, working as always out of tiny home shops with very simple equipment, managed over the years to transition the rather balky "Anxieties" into increasingly fast and increasingly reliable engines that always held numbers of A and B records during the 1960s and early '70s. It was a lot of work. But it was made more fun by the presence of yet another young U of W engineering student and grad, Ron Anderson out of Port Angeles, WA, who had been racing an Alden-built Hot Rod in BOH before discovering the Anzanis and getting deeply involved in their development. Ron, who went on to the highest levels of factory tunnel boat racing, describes Jim's initial relationship to him as that of a mentor. A couple of other names to add at this point are Ron's brother Don "Dewey" Anderson and Charles "Honker" Walters, both of whom could fairly be called "team drivers."
We who watched this are of the opinion that Jim Hallum would have had a strong claim to be the best engine man in outboarding at the time, because his Anzanis were outrunning other men's Konigs which actually had more potential power in them than did the Anzanis. Jim himself, a rather shy and self-effacing man who preferred to stay quietly in the background, would never have thought in such terms. There's an old saw about show-horses vs. work-horses, and Jim was emphatically one of the latter. Additionally, he "could do more with less" than about anyone we knew, working at a little bench in a garage with the cars in it, and little equipment beyond a homemade press, a gas-welding rig, a little Atlas lathe, and his "Civil War milling machine," a genuine relic, yet sending world-beating 2-stroke screamers out the door.
If that's not enough, he helped some dirtbike and flat-track racers, and roadracer Jimmy Dunn with hopping up their bikes. Oh, and he built some racing chainsaws! In these efforts he was among the earlier American developers of tuned exhausts and expansion chambers.
Have I mentioned that Jim was a regular hiker and fly-fisherman?
The justly famous 100mph record set by Gerry and Jim in B Hydro with a rather obsolescent 2-cylinder Anzani, long into the era of Quincy loopers and 4-cylinder Konigs which even in the C and D classes had not yet matched that speed, has been described elsewhere. So has the less-known "D" engine, comprised of two B Anzanis (one of Jim's, one Ron's) mounted side by side on a very impressive Bill Tenny gearbox. I'm trying to coax Chuck Walters, who was the driver of this experimental 140hp brute, to come tell this story and others.
Ron Anderson moved to Wisconson in the early-Seventies to work for Mercury, and I believe he and Lee Sutter did about the last racing of the "Seattle-style" Anzanis. By that point the weak-kneed Lucas magnetos had been replaced by the Mercury "Super Spark" (right?) CD ignitions, making the final Anzanis, with their four carbs and high porting and expansion chambers actually more reliable than the early ones, certainly a lot easier to get on-plane without fouling plugs. I remember the season that Fantum ran Jim's last iteration of the B Anzani, and that motor ran like a watch, race after race.
By then the Anzani's time was up, and Jim was working on a B and a C Konig 4-cylinder Gerry had purchased. The C got sold fairly soon, but Jim's reworked B/350 Konig over a four-year period and with three owners and four drivers, won back to back National Championships (Walin and Dick Rautenberg), set a competiton record (Barry Lewis), and was National High Point in 350ccH (Steve Johnson). Jim Hallum could build a racemotor!! He also built what we think was the first alky race conversion of the Evinrude 60hp triple, with much bigger carbs, etc..
My computer is timing out. I'll be back with more, and am soliciting Jim's other friends, mostly named here, to tell their stories. Among them certainly will be the members of the Losvar family which employed Jim for many years; several Losvars (Art, Jim, Tom, Dave) were racers themselves. Another long-time friend, Leland Schmidt, a local tunnel-boat builder and racer, went on hikes and fishing trips with Jim in later years. In his last years Jim did some volunteer work in the local Duvall, WA food-bank, and we might hear more about that.
For myself, I want to say that Jim Hallum was a wonderful fellow to talk with. Nobody I've talked to can remember ever having seen Jim get angry. He had taken up working on and flying his old pulse-jet model planes, and some new ones, some years back, and was happy to talk at length of all the technical minutiae and fabrication problems with anyone who was interested in such things, and so I got to assist in a couple of launches. We had shared interests in light planes and old warbirds, which Jim enjoyed photographing, and yakked for hours on these and many other things from the space program to the making of pipe organs, and I will miss it very much.
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Re-post of 2016 lost reply to Smittythewelder's Jim Hallum remembrance.
Early in 2017 the carefully filed post-it note with Smitty's phone number fell out of the stack of desk paper. I gave him a call to ask if he had managed to survive into 2017 without trauma. He had. Then he reminded me that my 2016 long reply to his Post remembering Jim Hallum had been lost from the Forum, system problems. Smitty asked if I could reload the file if I had kept a copy. I am now going to try that reload. I reworked the file with a few more details and added a set of 4 photos taken from Hallum's video production about his Anzani which set the B-Hydro record over 100 mph with Gerry Walin and their true prop riding hull.
The file upload worked in 2016 so maybe I will be lucky again in 2017,
Rus Rotzler
===
NOTE:
The long .rtf text file must be viewed with a good word processor program to see the photo images at the end of the file. A simple text edit program may not display the images.
The photos are really worth a viewing. Anybody recall seeing a 4 carburetor -B- Anzani or the record setting prop on it straight from Entrop's Merc 75-H crew-sock prop bags?
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Earlier moto to outboard efforts by Jim Hallum
Well Smitty, your latest good words about the changing period into the outboard full open racing classes is quite interesting but mostly after my time with Jim Hallum. Jim and I had spent much conversation, and some detailed thoughts, about fitting the better mid-1960's motorcycle engines to outboard racing use. You have provided a nice overview of the later conversion successes and Jim sent a set of DVD's he made that showed the more current small racing classes using current motors & maybe some of the earlier conversions. I think that DVD set ought to be kept in an SOA library rather that go extinct with me out here in the hinterlands.
But more of interest for early moto engine to outboard conversion. It was about 1965-67 when we were out at the farm shop and thinking about some practical way to adapt the current 125 cc rotary valve Yamaha single to outboard racing use. The issue of engine approval was a question but since the motor was certainly a production engine by the thousands we thought that use was possible in the NOA if not the APBA. You previously told of the Bill Tenney twin Anzani gearbox to tower housing setup used one final time by Hallum and Anderson. That setup was the basis for a rough design drawing Hallum made which placed four of the 125 cc Yamaha motorcycle motors into a configuration which used the Tenney bevel gear system similar to the coupled Anzani's but with 4 input shafts, one on each face of a cube gearbox. As I mentioned earlier, this 'imagineering' was a fun exercise but Hallum was serious enough to make a fairly accurate rough design drawing. There was not a chance at that time of any actual construction.
The output of four "full modified" 125 cc Yamaha running alcohol was going to be something near or over 4 HP per cubic inch so the "Square 4" 500 cc Yamaha setup was likely to have 120 HP and loads of torque because of the basic bore/stroke ratio which I think was the same as the Factory RD-56 250 cc twin Gran Prix machine. It was also not going to be a light motor hanging on the transom; maybe no worse than two iron B Anzani's though.
Hallum & Dunn's first effort for the road racing 125 rotary valve Yamaha did prove out the horsepower range estimate using gasoline so the 500 cc outboard configuration would have been impressive right from the beginning. Probably would have needed to fit it to Charles Walters runabout for safe enough use though.
So there you have it, another snippet of an early interesting effort by Hallum before he got busy doing the rather outstanding post-Anzani workings.
Fun times later but I missed almost all of it unfortunately.
Another tidbit Smitty. In 1962 at Lake Lawrence, 1 2/3 mile record course, I ran over the record with my 1955 Entrop hull in DOH but by not enough to make the books; worst start I ever made at 3 seconds behind the clock. Finished well over a full turn ahead. Surprising super smooth ride with the transom off of the water except for the last half of each turn. Much lament over that lost 3 seconds since it would have put the DOH 5-mile record in the books until almost 1970. Wasn't wise enough to find $5 to buy the Bob Carver turn entry photo. A month earlier at the Divisionals in Estacada, Oregon I also finished with over a full turn lead but threw the shear pin in heat 2. I think it was Howard Anderson who won on points and got the guarantee to run at the Nationals. Am pretty sure that he won DOH at those Nationals so was was a fast fellow. OK then on your "gear head" description but I was plenty quick in DOH for a few short years. Fun times then too at age 20.
Russ Rotzler
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1972 B-Stock motor design.
OK Smitty, here is the assembly drawing PDF file for the 1972 B-Stock motor using mostly OMC parts.
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Well it worked. A click downloads the file to your computer for viewing. Maybe I should try to upload it as an image which may be directly visible in the window.
Attachment 62915
That worked,.. good when stuff happens.
Hallum enjoyed seeing this drawing, the actual detail design drawings (now firmly in hiding), and crankshaft counterweight calculations needed to direct the dominate vibratory force vector. It's most likely that I purchased the OMC parts from him at Losfar's Boathouse in Mukilteo before doing the design.
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Pipes, valves, and old guys roadside adventures.
Smitty; yeah, we old guys are now lucky in that there must have been women in the "Freeway Rest Stop" planning groups. Seems like a number of stops were later additions in the West.
About your early pipe & valve questions & comments. Here is an unfortunately long comment. I hope none doze off in the reading.
Hallum & I used two small 1961-62 motorcycles, a 50cc Tohatsu & 80cc Yamaha, as very good test machines for many later porting modifications and pipe test. The Anzani port numbers went to the motorcycles and then added carving & features tested went back. At times the large mostly empty Mukilteo public boat launch parking lot across from Loser’s Boathouse was the easy & quick place to test the pipes. We found some odd effects at different tuning ranges. Both moto's raced the short dirt oval tracks too.
Mainly, all that was needed was to learn what not to apply to the Anzani or any of the other motors. We could almost simulate the race boat conditions by making higher gear full throttle runs from very low motor speeds. That gave time to see what the tach was reading as we felt the pipe doing normal or strange things.
We did try various schemes to have pipes be effective over a longer rpm range. I don’t recall that Hallum’s bounce pipes had an operating range that was much different than any others. They did have a strong effect and depended on porting relations for peak performance. Nothing odd there. I will guess that the double pipe for a single cyl. that you saw could easily have been a test set for the 50cc Tohatsu. Dividing the initial pressure wave into two pipes near the cylinder is a problem for returning wave strength. Probably would have done strange things on the Tohatsu, including nasty flat zones and crankcase pressurizing since it wasn’t reed valved. One extra long Tohatsu pipe had 3 nodes where you could feel it “come in” twice more above its start point and wasn’t a strong action pipe either. This was years before the double divergent cone discovery. (Later, Anzani bounce pipe c-case pressurization problems were found when I took a good gage to Hallum for a tank test after seeing a vapor plume out of the Vacturi carb just before the tuned range when at a race).
At that same time for the 80cc Yamaha I built a coaxial double pipe to test for a broad operating range not needing a valve. The arrangement was an outer megaphone set to start about 6000 rpm with a standard expansion chamber mounted internally on center and set for about 9000 rpm. The test was to find out if the outbound pressure wave would divide equally enough between the outer megaphone and the inner bounce pipe. The tapered header pipe ended at about 2 in. diameter. The megaphone was welded to the header pipe. The expansion chamber divergent cone initial diameter was maybe 1/2 inch smaller and was supported downstream from the header pipe about an inch or two. The megaphone angle allowed for the inner bounce pipe angle.
The thought was that the initial shock wave would have its center portion “cored out” by the bounce pipe while the outer portion would flow as an annular ring out of the megaphone and hopefully act normally. The result was that both pipes had their effect but much diminished over what would be normal as individual pipes. The power band covered the full expected tuned range smoothly, had marginally OK power to top rpm, but was well below what either pipe would provide as normal single pipes of either type. Adjustments to change the “cored out” area made no difference. This is why I speculate that the outbound shock wave can be easily disrupted.
The now common two into one siamese bounce pipes on twin cyl. outboards did come after the double divergent cone discovery but that may not be why having half of the header pipe wall fall away at the convergence zone doesn’t seem to cause a large wave disruption.
=== Clear memories from 50 years past seem good, but .... ===
As for the “ram’s horn” -B- Anzani pipes. I recall being there sawing metal for them with Jim at the farm shop. That particular tubing was the initial expanding curve divergent cone portion starting at the exh. port mount plate and ran several segments around the long curve. I went home to make the end cones because I had the right lighter sheet stock. Brought them to the farm as Jim was finishing the divergent section (double divergent by then) and we rolled up the straight sections, mounted the end cones & exit tubes. That is my early memory. Jim built a good aux. mount system made easier by the short length of pipes aft of the motor.
The Anzani -A- motor for record use was already sitting on a rack somewhere with the diverter valve and double pipe setup on each cylinder. I recall Jim making the wood pattern for the first cast diverter valve. I rode along with him to a pattern shop - small foundry of an old friend (Peterson) which was near the Spokane street overpass. Seems like it was a year or more before those castings became operating valves. That whole effort was a serious chore for Jim. I do know that the valved 4 pipe -A- motor was in Walin’s trailer box the year I subbed for Halum as his mechanic at the APBA DePue Nationals and the week later NOA Nationals at Midland, MI. I keep thinking that was 1966. I think that was also the first year of the “ram’s horn” pipes on the -B-.
Both races were very disappointing. Wain said the motors did not seem to have the normal power. Just plain felt feeble but still ran about equal to the other top racers. We didn’t discover the fuel type problem until back at the Boathouse and found that the “sponsored” fuel was not methanol and not nitro-methane. In the test tank the -B- wouldn’t pull the normal load wheel to proper rpm until the “nitro” was added at nearly double their top competition fuel percentage. Jim was very worried about dumping in more nitro so went in steps and hoped to catch problem indications before melting a piston. At something just under 60% nitro, instead of their normal 30% the motor was close to normal power and ran fine. Walin and I had discussed increasing the nitro at DePue after he commented that the motors acted like they were running straight methanol break-in fuel. I think Gerry even called Jim about added nitro but it was simply too much of a risk outside of experience and there was not enough time or extra fuel for testing. Had we tipped the nitro can hard at those two Nat’s the results would have been much more fun.
R.R.
Photo of me wrenching on Walin’s -A- to get at the twisted crank in a Milwaukee parking lot in between DePue and Midland Nat’s. Walin was inside getting a proper OMC recognition for his StarFlite 4 record. Yeah, my travel rig was the ’63 Stingray back then. Nice ride for a Model Maker apprentice. It hauled half a trailer box load of late prepared Anzani powerheads & pipes to catch up with Walin in Minnesota.
Fun times for sure (and a little stretching of the "Reasonable and Prudent" Montana posted highway speed limits).
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A powerful background....
Team Master Oil; please understand that my involvement & comments about the Hallum-Walin Anzani early-mid 1960's development era was preceded by already powerful Anzanis from Bill Tenney and initial efforts by Hallum. Those are vitally important.
The British knew how to make a proper 2-cycle motor plus Anzani was an old well established company I think. They made small aircraft engines in the early 1900’s WW-1 years and the motorboat engines in later times but I don’t remember their history well.
The interesting thing about British and European 2-stroke motors was that they used loop scavenged design in preference to the cross scavenged, deflector piston designs of American manufacturers from early times onward. The first Brit. 2-stroke motorcycle I saw was a loop scavenged 250cc Greeves single "scrambles" machine growling through a short tuned megaphone pipe and slinging sand around the Boise, ID foothills in late 1955.
For large and industrial 2-stroke motors the US did use various non-crossflow designs. I will guess that the deflector piston crossflow design standard used from the beginning by American outboard manufacturers was driven by manufacturing simplicity. Much less complicated foundry patterns for the cast iron and basic straight machining. Same benefits for the later aluminum production outboard motors. Multi cylinder inline motors also needed some added cylinder spacing distance for loop scavenge transfer passageways even with careful placement but that doesn't explain the old opposed twin's cross flow design.
Bill Tenney was a noted outboard racer, probably starting in that iron engine era of Jim Hallum’s father. He knew very well how to modify a motor for racing performance. He also had a good machining facility. I can only speculate on what he did to the already well designed Anzani loop scavenged standard production boat motor which he imported. I don’t know the history of his being the Anzani importer with regard to the standard motor or that which related to his providing the racing motors. Whatever the correct history, Tenney sent out Class A & B racing motors which were well modified versions of the standard motor. Their basic design insured immediate dominance over the American deflector piston motors, (and any other cross scavenged motor).
I would like make note here that the central States racers outboard racers ought to remember the “Aluminum Anzani” produced in northern Ohio by Milford Harrison & son Kaye (and the whole family) at Birmingham Metal Products; home was Vermillion, a lakeshore town east of Sandusky. I do not know the full history of their outboard racing motors but their machining facilities were excellent in a moderately large production shop specializing in products made on cam operated screw-machine type lathes. No shortage of milling machines and other machines either. (I sure hope that I have not messed up the spelling on “K’s” name.)
The Harrison’s certainly had the capability of manufacturing every part of their racing motors. They may have begun with a racing Anzani and decided that changing to an aluminum block would make a much lighter and more easily repaired or modified motor. Since the motor was approved for APBA racing it must have met the ‘commonly availabilty’ rules of the time. So I will guess that the entire motor was their product.
Externally it looked like an Anzani, megaphone pipes and all. They may not have used the gear driven magneto, just no memory on that. I also do not recall any internal differences but vague memory is that there were some; maybe something like not using a crankshaft center rotary valve but that is speculation. The motors were powerful and competitive in a fast region. The Harrison’s made the long trip to Lake Lawrence sometime in the mid 1960’s. Towed a very fine and impressive racing trailer, might have included a light machine shop. They ran A & B hydro & runabout, and it seems like more than that too. Kaye may have set a record in one runabout class and did take home the win I think. The Harrison’s were fast, Walin & Anderson & Sutter were fast, the California troops were fast, and so were the newer Konig’s.
The Loopers were noisy...
That year and those years at L. Lawrence were fairly spectacular. The little “Mukilteo” motorcycles had done their job as motor mod. & pipe test machines and had tossed some of us boat racers into the flat-track dirt an embarrassing number of times, then retired to dark corners. The mid 1970’s at L. Lawrence were even more spectacular according to the tales.
R.R.
Lowell Haberman Had One in 1956
At the APBA Nationals, 1956, I think, Lowell Haberman had an Anzani and Eric Molinar drove it. Very unreliable at the time.
When I saw Jerry Walin "The Phantom" run at the kilos, Modesto, 1963, was the first time I thought those motors migh have some potential. Jerry went like a hundred in a 350....
Times Change, Modesto Reservoir Rules Changed
Quote:
Originally Posted by
OldRJexSea
Ron; Nice UIM record certificates. Certainly worth a place behind glass in a frame for a wall display somewhere.
I think that the Seattle folks became mostly too wary of the Modesto winds to chance the long drive later that decade and maybe longer.
Even though the Kilos were always before boating season started, the board of Supervisors ruled that the reservoir could not be 100% closed to the public.
So, one person on a Jet Ski, kept 100 boats off the lake. Hotels, restaurants, gas stations lost business, but the county wanted to be "FAIR".
So, they moved the kilos to Oroville. I never thought Oroville was fast water, but then again, I never ran there. I only help set up the kilo course.
My record certificates were on my dad's desk, under glass til he passed, March 1997.