looking for cars and drivers that drag raced at old bridge stadium ,nj, in the 60's ,to participate in 3rd annual speedway reunion scheduled for 2010.old bridge stadium was a 1/2 mile stock car oval that used the front straight for drag racing. Any cars ,and info greatly appreciated.
I ran there several times in '63 with my F/G '56 Chevy. I was there the night Don Raleigh almost went over the guard rail in turn one with his blown Buick Lyndwood dragster.
I was there in the late fifties until fall '61. I raced a 34 coupe in C-altered and also ran the timing stand. The races were run by the New Jersey Timing Associaion and our club was a member of that organization. I don't have the coupe anymore but probably have pictures of it (but not at the track). I may have a pic of me in the timing stand. I am now in FL so doubt I'd make any reunion unless I just happened to be in NJ at the time. I get back to NJ once or twice a year for family visits. I could give you lots of background info on the Timing Association (I was an officer) or the drag racing.
I was 12 or 13 when I went there for the stock car races. If I remember correctly there was a shorter oval inside the larger one where they ran midgets. BTW I'm 61 now. Nick
You're right Nick. The owners, Sol and Harold, built the smaller oval inside the bigger track so they could run midgets, etc. I don't think they ever did. When we started drag racing there that little oval was brand new. We had a hard time getting a license from the New Jersey State RAcing Commission. They tried to make us follow stock car rules (that's all they knew) such as doors welded shut on all cars, Roll bars in all cars, etc. They were also afraid that racers would continue around the first and second turns. We couldn't convince them otherwise and they made us set up planks on the curves that racers had to wind through thus forcing them to slow quickly. Everybody cursed these boards and more that a few guys hit them. And we sometimes and conveniently "forgot" to put them out. The State guys rarely checked up on us. I was running the timing stand in 1961 when I git drafted. Sol and Harold gave me one of their alternate awards that were offered in lieu of trophies (Some guys had so many trophies they realy didn't want any more). It was a wrist watch with "Old Bridge Drags" on the face. I still have it. Probably a valuable collectible now. Lots of memories - ancient history.
used to go to Old Bridge (still my fav racetrack) to watch the stock cars, and midgets on the oval, my dad and 3 uncles all ran there, and went with my older cousins to the drags, the inner oval they ran TQ's, and mini stocks on, and always used it whenever Joie Chitwood, or Jack Kochman's Hell Drivers were booked in. how many remember that the NASCAR grand national circuit ran there, Petty, Jarrett, Roberts, etc. All us NJ guys should get together to make the reunion bigger next year, and help out the guys from the Garden State Vintage Stock Car Club (an invaluable source of steel parts for my 37 coupe, thanks bill erbe and dan rhein) also how many still have those plastic 37 ford coupes they sold, and copies of illustrated speedway news, great pics!
Sorry I missed this. Raised in OB all my life and never knew. This was a bit before my time though. Anyone know where this stadium was? Probably built townhouses there now.
The track was across from the Browntown shopping center behind where the storage company is now.And yes it is a housing development.
yes one old bridge was in south jersey 1/8 drag strip and a stock car track now gone and great meadows also know as island dragway is still a working track and where big daddy don frist ran his swaprat over 200 mph i ran both tracks in 64 with a 50 olds coupe then a 55 chevy at the reunion bill (forget his last name) had a lot of drag race pictures he ran a 57 or58 merc
Thanks Ted, the Lyndwood rail I'm caretaker for won Low ET for the day back on October 16, 1960, beat the Gianinni Brothers HEMI powered Lyndwood at Great Meadows.
I talk to johh that sold the t-shirts at the old bridge reunion he has some left so if anyone would like to buy one you can call john at732-742-4588 he takes paypal i can post a picture of one later
Are you sure OB was an 1/8 mile.A friend in town who ran there said the straight was less than 1/16 mile,and banked.I saw pics in Hot Rod mag and they had to hold the cars on the starting line so they wouldn't roll because there were no line locs in those days.The Xmas tree was made from a 3 bulb traffic signal.
No way was it an 1/8th mile. A long 1/16th at best. The guys with street cars would never get into third gear. The Haydo (sp) Brothers from Millburn had a Vette with 6:?? gears and would almost get into 4th. Sorry no photos in my collection as they always ran at night making photography with my cheep camera impossible. YES...they did have a crew of guys who would hang on the rear bumper ot lean on the windshield as the starting line was in turn 4 going down hill.
Old Bridge was a 1/16th strip. I ran a 63 Grand Prix D stock,389 4 speed and did pretty good. There was a guy in a 60 chevy convertible I couldnt get by. It was in late 64 and 65, the mustangs came out but my big old pontiac suprised quite A few of them. As was said before we went to stock car races and the drags almost every weekend. That was reallygreat,miss those times.
this was talked about at the reunion some say it was a 1/8 and some say it was a 1/16 yes they had people to hold the cars so they didn,t roll i talk to terry cook and that was his frist job at tracki remenber he was the wiper when you came back if he wipe you number off you lost if he waved you on you went the next round good times
Hello, I just posted over in the "Eastern Drag News" thread and I see I should done a search and posted here. (Damn newbies!) My name is Kurt Grotyohann and my father was Art Grotyohann who was the manager of the Old Bridge Drags and also the president of the New Jersey Timing Association. He also shot photos and wrote the results column on Old Bridge for Eastern Drag News. Just to clear up what is always confusing, the Old Bridge Drags were held on the frontstretch of the Old Bridge Stadium half mile oval track on route 516 in Old Bridge. The track length was 1/12.5 of a mile! This track had nothing to do with the 1/4 mile strip at Madison Twp. (now Old Bridge Twp.) Raceway Park in Englishtown. The drags at Old Bridge ran from 1960 to 1968. Raceway Park opened in 1965. Here is a scan of the Eastern Drag News issue where my father explains the layout; (Fourth paragraph) The photos my dad shot were taken with an early version of a Polaroid camera so he could send them in with his column on Monday morning. I have a few of the outakes from those efforts. Here's a shot from the outside of the fence showing the cars staged in the fourth turn of the oval track; And yes, you can see the "car holders" to keep them from rolling down the banking. Also, the car in the right hand lane had to back-up to get in position. It was really funny when they forgot to take it out of reverse! Someone earlier up thread mentioned that they used a modified traffic light to start the races. This is not true! That's always thought because the "traffic" light that was used for the oval track always shows up in the drag racing photos. The first set of lights were strewn along a cable that was strung across the track. Later, my father designed the first "christmas trees" that also hung from the cable. Here is a photo were you can see the "trees"; As the president of the NJTA my dad organized the building of the timing stand down at the drag racing starting line of the track. Here are a few photos of the timing stand just after it was completed; There was a set of removable stairs that attached to the stand with a rod that went through the eyelets below to door. The stairs were keep inside the stand to deter vandals. This is looking out the left side of the stand towards the fourth turn and the starting line. The piece of electrical equipment on the right is the "Auto-writer". This allowed the official in the stand to "write" the ET and MPH down and have it electrically transmitted to the back pit shack were the driver could pick up his time slip. This was state of the art in the sixties! These are the timers that my father built with Fred Schulz. As noted above they were also used at Island and Vargo. I managed to save one of these when Mom cleaned house and just had it on display and the reunion earlier this month. That should do it for now! Post back if you have any questions.
anyone remember a guy called frank glosnek...he raced a 56 chevy??? looking for info on him i now own his 56 ..
Good to hear from you, Kurt. I worked Old Bridge in the early years - before 1961 - and you would sometimes hang out in the pit office from where I called and staged the classes. In those days we used the old timing stand up at the top of the bleachers. At the time I lived in West Orange and I was the main contact with Fred Shulz who lived in Montclair. He was an electrical engineer who had designed and maintained our timers. He had a neat home lab in the basement where he worked on our timers. He once showed me a test box he designed that received signals from the U,S. Bureau of Standards. These signals were the exact 1-second official time standard. Fred fed this to the timers and one time had me run tests while he worked on another timer. I remember repeatedly getting 1.000 second readings on our dual lane ET clock. After several dozen such tests I got a single .999 second reading. From then on it was only 1.000. Nobody ever challenged the accuracy of Shulz clocks. We use to complain to NHRA because they would not accept Shulz times for national records. I think NHRA was in bed with Chrondek in those days so we never got any where. But I think there came a time when record events called for two sets of times and one had to be Chrondek. Wow, this was so long ago. I'll check this site from time to time. I guess I could tell lots of stories from the old days. This is fun. Kurt: by the way, I recently scanned the scrap books of the New Jersey Timing Association and have several images of meetings and dinners with your Dad in the pictures. The scrap books covered 1952 to about 1957. I can email images to you if you are interested. Frank Carey Melbourne, Florida
We ran Old Bridge in our sports cars.We had a friend who ran a dragster there,name was Butch.I can't remember his last name.I won my class the last night they raced.Sorry to say I don't have any photos. Oh Yea Hi Frank!
The pictures of the timers brought back memories. Those two were probably built in the late 1950s. When the NHRA Safety Safari was touring the country in 1954 setting up drag races they brought their own clocks and used them in the drag meet they organized at Linden Airport in 1954. The newly formed New Jersey Timing Association eventually got drags running at Woodbine in south Jersey in 1956. That's when Fred Shulz built his first timer for us and he is pictured in a few of the Woodbine photos I have. In those days we only measured mph. When we started at Old Bridge we had Fred build one of the pictured dual lane clocks. These used the Hewlett Packard decades for display. Each column was numbered lightbulbs. If we used it for ET we got a direct reading in seconds. If we used it for MPH we got the trap time and converted it to MPH using a big plastic mounted chart. We later had Fred build several other clocks. He built a single lane ET clock that used Nixie lamps for displays. These looked like the top of a vacuum tube and there was a stack of wire formed numbers inside. There were perhaps six of these tubes in a row. As the clock ran the individual wire-formed numbers would glow. When the clock stopped the display at that moment would freeze. Fred also built us a dual lane ET clock that used mechanical clock displays that looked like a regular clock except the big hand made one revolution per second and the little hand would count the revolutions of the big hand. I don't think we could read these to three decimal places as we could with his other designs. I remember when we started using the two clocks pictured above at Island Dragway they would sometimes overheat. I took them back to Fred and he modified them by adding fans inside the top cover and that fixed it. By the early 1960s we had enough timing equipment to run two meets on the same day and we sometimes would. I remember we timed meets in Forty Fort, PA. and a few other small places I can no longer remember. I keep in touch with Pete VanIderstine and he recently told me that he and Al Brown were the two guys who, on behalf of the New Jersey Timing Association, negotiated with the Old Bridge owners and got drag racing started there. So it was the NJTA who ran the drags - at least in the beginning - maybe to the end. I don't know. While Al and Pete were always there it was Art Grotyohann who really was the manager and I think he managed Old Bridge from the first meet in 1958 until the last - whenever that was. I was out of drag racing by then and often tell people that the last time I went to the drags they started with flags! Any of you who were At Old Bridge likely remember our big truck - a step van - in which we carried our scales, clocks, and other equipment. It also had a huge permanently mounted 7kva generator so we could supply our own electricity as was necessary at Woodbine. Thanks for rattling my chain, Ray. I'll post more when I get a chance. If I can figure out how to post a picture here I'll post a pic of my channeled 34 coupe with which I won a few trophies in C/A at Old Bridge in the 1950s.
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