Ron Hill Family: Hill Marine and Signature Propellers

[Ron Hill]

At the first Mini Enduro, I built a fiber glass C Runabout with a MOD VP bottom. I made a bottom water pick up nose cone and I think we led the first lap. Bill Sandberg was racing the Mini Enduro and he has said for 30 years he thought John Castelli was sitting in a lawn chair when he came by him as his knees were up to his chin. You can see the boat really had a seat in it.

Looking at my other "TOYS" no wonder I was always broke....

[Ron Hill]

My dad had inspected Mercury Outboard Motors from the time they started racing. What he loved about the Mercury Motors was the fact they really were all the same. So my dad made special tools to be able to inspect the motor and keep motors "STOCK". As boat racing in the Mercury Division was called Stock Outboard Racing. NASCAR, today still keeps the word "S" as in Stock in the name. NASCAR has always tired to keep people honest.

An area my dad didn't like is how people were called for "GUN JUMPING". After being "SCREWED" out of the Nationals in D Runabout, 1960, my dad made it his quest to fix BS calls. My dad used a bar-b-que spit motor, a Gilmer belt to run the clock and solenoid from a '55 Chevy, and hooked up his Polaroid camera to take picture when the clock hit 60.

We often joked that there was no such thing as a perfect start, you were either late or over. And that was pretty much the truth until my dad got the camera going in Region 12.

We used the camerea for years. This was Lake Los Angeles, 1973. This is probably the only photo left from hundreds that SCOA took. Rod Zapf was long gone over the line, Ed Peters, was almost legal. Had I not hit a roller and "POPPED" the nose, I'd have been over. It might be Teddy Whalen or Roger Hewson in my rooster Tail. The camera saved me that day!

[Ron Hill]

8 mins · Edited ·


Sometimes you have a boat you just love. I bought this 20 foot Ron Jones tunnel in mid 1970 from Hillside Sports, they were a Mercury dealer and no one was to be able to buy Jones Boats but Mercury dealers. Bottom Line: Gil Lerma was a friend, he managed Hillside Sports and he sold me the boat. We rigged it in a hurry and went to Galveston, May, 1970, and we managed to set it up too high and burned both motors down.
The next race was the Elsinore 500. I led until I broke a crankshaft. I left after I broke down, and flew to Paris, France. It was only after I landed in Paris that I found out Lou Brumett of Mandella Boats had been killed in the 500.
We went to Havasu that November and the Jones was running 108 MPH and the best OMC twin engine boat was running 92 MPH. I came around 4th on the first lap Joe Fielder "Stuffed" his Glastron-Molinari.
On the restart I ran 3rd or 4th for almost an hour just keeping the leaders in sight and one of my gearcases fell off. Team OMC replaced the gearcase and I really started running the Jones hard, by the two hour mark I was back in the top ten. But another gearcase fell off, the studs just sheared. at the end of three hours, I lost another gearcase and right at four hours I lost the 4th case. I was still in the top ten at the endo of four hours.
OMC said, they would not give me gearcases for Sunday, that they were committed to racing single engine from then on. I never loved single engine racing like I loved my 20 foot Ron Jones.
I sold the boat to Doug Fielder to make into a KT, and he was killed driving his GN at Elsinore. The boat was at Nordskog Marine for years. Bob Nordskog tried to give the boat to me because it was in my name. I told him it was Doug's. I don't know what ever happened to that boat.
It cost more than my house at the time.

[Ron Hill]

I was a "Stud" in those years, 1967. This is the first posted picture since October 7, 2015 on www.Boatracingfacts.com . Liquidweb finally figured out what they had done wrong.

[Ron Hill]

I had met Ted March in 1967, OMC had recruited him to ride with me in my 17 foot Glastron with twin EVINRUDES. In 1977, Ted March contacted me and bought a prop. He told me he worked for Playboy and could I bring the prop up to LA to a Playboy Party. At this time, I didn't know he had riden with me in 1967.

[Ron Hill]

Dick O'Dea told me most of his pictures were lost in a house fire.

[Ron Hill]

On page 87 Skippy, C-147 is listed as Harold Peters. Ralph DeSilva help Bernie Van Osdale identify these photos, and Harold Peters was C-147 BEFORE my dad got the number. No big deal and probably no one cares but me. Here are three pictures, one from the book. Two of my dad. My dad's "SIX STUD" is the Racing C, the P-50 with the muffler is is C Service.

[Ron Hill]

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[Ron Hill]

The more I write the less I think anyone would want to read my book anyway. Tana Moore, APBA Propeller Magazine Editor, tells me to keep writing.....

Anyway, I ran across a couiple of things I wanted in the Hill Family section.

C-6 was the Bellflower Flash, 1953. My brother was in the Army but took a weekend pass AWOL, I think it was called, to race at the Puddle, off Washington Blvd, where two years later we'd race 39 weeks in a row on live TV channel 5.

Before Russ went in the Army, he always had nice looking equipment and was always a top runner.

In the old days, if you were smart, they skipped you a grade. My brother skipped 3rd and 4th grade. He graduated High School in 1950. He didn't turn 16 til that October. He finished Junior College at 18 and got drafted about the time he turned 19. He was supposed to be in Korea by Christmas, but Eisenhower ended the "Conflict" and my brother ended up in Germany.

My brother ran an IBM machine in Germany that was a block long. My brother worked the night shift, so he's sleep on the "Computer" and when it quit shaking, he'd get up and add more punch cards. My brother very much love this time in the Army as he traveled quit a bit and learned some "French" which I always thought was strange as he was stationed in Germany.

When Russ got home from the Army, many things, including himself had changed. He continued to race for probablly another ten years. But he didn't do much winning.

Actually, 1966 was his last year. He was into APBA politics and thought he could grow the organization, he was wrong.

I had bought a new or like new Sid Craft from Stan Armstrong in Beaver Falls, PA at the Nationals. The was 4 miles an hour faster than my brother's Sid. So, the last few races in 1965, I let Russ run my Sid and he won...By June of '66 he'd won 9 races in a row. He had a wife, two kids. He said he was done racing.

[Ron Hill]

Ed Karakowa was a grape farmer in Selma, California. He race C Racing Runabout. He had a Evinrude Six Stud that he'd bought from Fred Hauenstein, in 1953, when Fred Needed the money. Ed had my dad build him a complete Hubbell Racing C from Hubbell parts only. It may have been the only TOTALLY Racing C ever assembled. Ed ordered a new boat from Lee Morehouse. He had a brand new DeSilva, 1955, but he didn't like the square sides. My brother raced it for Ed once, then Ed sold it.

We went to Parker in October, 1955, I raced "A" Alky Hydro for the first time and won. My brother on the other hand, managed to blow the Morehouse C Racing Runabout over backwards and screwed the boat up, pretty good.

We cam home put the Morehouse under the grape arbor in my parent's back yard and turned it up side down.

That was October of 1958. In early 1960, my dad built up a new three screw port cover "D" and the Regatta Boat people, who might have been Larry Havens, built me a new D Runabout. Well, we'd test that new motor on the Regatta and it would show almost 64 MPH, when my Morehouse h that I'd almost won the nationals with in 1959 would only 61 MPH.

But if there was a ripple on the water the white boat would slow to 58 MPH. So, in testing we started call it the "White Nightmare" Rus Edmission, who later became Mattel Toy's top designer, painter a picture of a three eyed monster on the deck that said, "White Night Mare".

More later...when I get a computer that doesn't freeze. I finished writing and hit save and my computer froze......