Chrondek Images/Information/Stories/Builds/ECT.

We've got both of them pretty well finished and have assembled the first one and my partner should finish the wiring this weekend. It will be part of a display at the WV Dragracer's Hall of Fame at the Charleston, WV Doo Wop car show next weekend. If everything goes right it will blink down. Hope to post some pictures next week.

 

Here's one of the finished trees at the Doo Wop Show today. The two T/F dragsters are the Hundley and Boggs dragster and the Hunt Family Farms car. Behind them you can see the original Rod Shop Anglia. The tree lights the staged lights and then blinks down the five ambers to green.

 

The tree got great reviews at the Doo Wop car show sitting between the FED's! Here's a couple of shots of it safely back at home in the Hot Rod Grille garage with different stages of lights lit. The small sign at the top on the pre-stage section is a copy of an actual 1960's decal from the local track that closed in 1977. The other pic shows that track's tree and was the source of inspiration for this project.

Jim

 

Looks phenomenal!

 

The electronics boxes are really neat stuff....they used Dekatron tubes (spinners) in the early ones, then moved to Nixie tubes (individual number tubes) later. My brother has been making clocks and watches using Nixie tubes for years. There's a google group called "neonixie-l" dedicated to working with these old display tubes.

btw the trees are fantastic!

 

googled it and this is what I came up with Must have been for the chrondek clocks in the early 70's. Very Cool! https://www.google.com/search?q=neo...5YHADQ&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1366&bih=667&dpr=1

 

Here's a photo found on the H.A.M.B. trophy girl thread.

Here's the original posting:
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=376791&page=69
Scroll down to 1368.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-AS-...intage_Sports_Memorabilia&hash=item3a897a5f0f

 

Nice...pricey but nice.

 

Love this thread. I worked for Central Michigan Dragway (Mid Michigan Motorplex) when Jim and MaryJo re-opened it back in the seventies and remember those number tubes in the tower display box. Watched them every Sat/Sunday for years.
Also had to make a few emergency runs to Tri-City airport on early weekend mornings to send or pick up damaged tree components, from track services, for the next race.

 

I had these old factory shots

 

^awesomeness!

 

Back in the very early 90's the St Louis Gateway (across the river in Madison Ill) was still running much of the old Chrondek system (tree, cards, light boards). My father had done some work for the THEN owner of the corporation (Gateway International). I was employed on an as needed basis to repair the Chrondek driver boards used to light up each of the "modified seven segment displays". Each character had its own card, it was stone age electronic technology and the damp Mississippi River bottom air didn't help with reliability. A set of modern photocells and DOS driven desktop PC was already in use to time/control the tree and display lights board.

When the GRAND PRICK assn of L.B. purchased the corp they flattened EVERYTHING at the facility including the Christmas tree, display boards, etc...

I would LOVE to find a authentic Chrondek tree for my collection of man cave items... this is a very cool discussion.

Fond memories.......

 

The system that I used to work on at Gateway had the old Chrondek lighted display cards that were wired up to modified/enhanced "seven segment displays" on the big time/mph display boards for each lane. There was a big enclosure at the bottom of each time/display for each side of the track as I recall. each character on the display had its own card so... one card for the hundreds mph character, one card for the tens character, one card for the mph character and then into the decimals of mph characters, same for time so it was a large back of cards....

Each card had a big group of TRIACs that were the actual power switch to the individual light bulbs up at the top of the tower. If you look up how a seven segment display works, each group of light bulbs (horizontal or vertical) was driven by a TRIAC which was controlled by a IC and NPN or PNP transistor to switch on the switch... The desktop computer back in the tower would trigger each of the display cards depending on MPH/TIME that needed to be displayed.

Usually the issues with the big light displays were due to corrosion in the wiring/sockets OR oxidation on the card edge connector where the big ole Chrondek control cards would plug into the rack... I did do a lot of board level swapping of components to keep all of the segments/characters functioning.

Along the history of the track, someone had installed a signal booster to boost the photocell and computer output up and down the 1/4 mile track.

It was a cool gig that payed well AND allowed me VIP access to the tower/track/starting line any time that I wanted. Good memories, this is a fun thread to read...

 

Really interesting info!

 

I'm working on a old Chrondek Christmas tree, and was wondering if anyone could tell me what the small lights were for (between the fourth and fifth amber), and how they operated? It looks like they have small blue? bulbs in them in the pictures posted by copo69 above. I think they're handicap lights? Thanks for the help!

 

I'd love to know too. I keep looking in the old videos and old pictures but even at the national events they seem to usually have no bulbs in them. We used the blue bulbs as I seem to remember seeing them at one time and handicap bulbs was the only "probably" answer I got. I've asked several old racers and asked on forums they frequent but never got a definitive answer usually no answer or I don't know.

 

A friend found this article that explains what the small bulbs were used for.

 

thanks

 

I could use some help from you fellas! Looking for a very clear image of these signs The one found on the tower behind the Christmas tree. And the one found behind the dragster,. Thank you in advance!

 

Very cool sign! That would be a great one to reproduce. Thanks 94blackta for the information on this thread. I'm building my tree now using some original components from one of the old trees that was used at Great Lakes Dragaway in the '60's. I will post up some pictures in the near future. That sign would look killer by the tree.

 

Very Cool!

 

Cool sign! copo69 and I may have to reproduce a couple of those to go with our "trees". Thanks for posting.

 

Found these schematics for Chrondek after they were bought out by Dactronics Has a lot of diagrams for different parts of the timing system.

 

^ thank you so much for posting!

 

Link to my Facebook Chrondek Photo Album that is Publicly accessible.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1037058331887&type=3