Chris Ertlers #48 Lakeside Modified

[superstroke]

In September of 1971, Chris Ertler purchased the #50 modified from Walt Paddock.

The other photographs here were taken in May of 1972. They show the beautiful #48D Lakeside Modified on its way to the speedway. Chris transformed the #50 into the #48 car. Chuck Kacin wheeled the car in its first year. The unique lettering on this car was hand painted by Mike Young.

These great pictures are from the Chris Ertler collection.

[lakeside #29]

Thanks superstroke, when I bought this car I didn't know anything about racing an oval track car. You learn quick or quit. Walt Paddock was very honest when he sold me the car. He easily could have screwed a greenhorn over, but he didn't. He disclosed everything about the car and to this day I have total respect for him.
The motor needed to be rebuilt, so we bought a 262 Ford truck motor block from Bob McDowell at Banner Wrecking. Gus Collins Co. did the machine work. Ed Smith at Custom Grinders ground the camshaft. I had ordered Jahns flattop pistons from Kenz & Leslie. When they came in they had a high dome. We knew the head had been miiled, so we panicked a little but Bill Shaner the machnist checked everything twice and they worked. That thing had a ton of compression. Lonnie White who I worked with put the engine together. We later added a Clifford intake manifold with a 500cfm 2 barrel and Clifford headers. We figured the big 2 barrel was bigger than 2 singles it had on it.
Darryl Awmiller painted the car. The day the car was painted we both had been consuming malt beverages. When Darryl sprayed the silver base coat everything was fine, but when he started shooting the candy gold he hesistated on right "A" pillar. After a few seconds I asked if he didn't think he should move on further, "Oh yeah", and the car became bronze instead of gold. In fact when he got to the left side we ran out of paint. We grabbed a part gallon of candy red he had in his basement and mixed two colors and finished. You had to be in the right light to see the difference. Mike Young lettered for us.
A sponsorship deal fell threw so I repainted the car white over baby blue similar to combination that Pat VanDyke had on #50. About that time Jim Moore took over driving. a young Rick Losh lettered this edition. To me, having his Rick's Sign Shop logo the cowl was a status symbol.
We later sold the car to Bill Backman. His dad Jack was real thorough going over the car and he definately knew what he was doing. By the way, Bill is Jack and Scott Backman's big brother. Bill is a really good guy.

Chris Ertler

[lakeside #29]

The #48D was first raced on Mother's Day 1972. My intended driver Darryl Awmiller crashed his new Honda CB-750 K2 a couple of weeks earlier and was in no condition to drive. I was going to drive the first night. We towed the car over to my folks house to show it off before going to the race track. After hearing the engine running, neighbor Chuck Kacin came over to take a look at the car and wound up being drafted to drive.

Chuck had started racing in the early '60's in his native Pittsburgh, Pa. and had been racing figure 8s for a while at Englewood so he seemed like a logical choice. His wife wasn't really thrilled though, considering it was Mother's Day. When we got to the race track I didn't have a clue what to do. We wound up pitting at the west end of the pits in what we called "the hole". The only guy that would talk to us was Gus Thomas.

Chuck timed in to the slow heat. During the race he got into Ed Maillo in Mark Billick's #40, which sent Ed into the infield. After the race was over Chuck and I ran to Ed's pit and apologized for spinning him. We tried to tell him the brakes weren't right. He wouldn't talk to us. In the main event the first chance Ed got to get under Chuck, he took him up to the wall. If Chuck hadn't been paying attention my racing career would have probaly lasted one night. Chuck pulled the car in imediately and kept repeating "lesson learned, lesson learned." It turned out the right front wheel cylinder was leaking. We hadn't caught it when the car was being worked on in the spring. Chuck corrected it the next day.

[webby]

Man... the coupes were so clean in those days. I wish they still looked like that.

[lakeside #29]

Another Chuck Kacin story, I remember another time when Chuck was driving #48D. He was running in the main event toward the rear when the leaders were coming up on him fast. Chuck was trying to stay low and out of the way. I saw Roy Jackson in #45 and Don Wilson in #19 coming and the next thing I see is Chuck spinning backwards towards the south turn wall. He didn't hit the wall, but came to rest within inches of it. When I took my eyes off of my car the next thing I saw was Eddie Marquez in his #3 coming straight for the wall next to Chuck. Eddie hit it a ton and really torn his car up.

After we got home from Lakeside we went to Englewood to see the end of the figure 8 main event. As we walked people kept coming up to him asking about his #98. None us knew what they were talking about. That night Chuck had loaned Bennie Garcia his car. Bennie had renumbered it his usaual #75. We found out real fast what the questions were all about. In the figure 8 main event Bennie had flipped the car and slid thruogh the "X" on his roof. Benny appologized for wrecking the car and repaired it for Chuck.

Chuck had flipped another car earlier that year. It had been the car Bobby Jackson won the '71 championship in that Chuck bought from Darrell Smith and the one Bennie flipped was a spare car. Chuck decided to stop driving my modified after that and put the ex-Bobby Jackson car back together. Chuck eventually sold the Smith/Jackson car to Terry Boyle. Mr. Boyle later sold it to Terry Martinez.

[lakeside #29]

Shortly after we started running the #48 car, we were approached by the Powder Puff club about having a lady driving my car. We wanting to fit in, so of course we said yes. The young lady that drove for us was Claudette Tanguay. She was late model #68 driver Gary Semman's girlfriend. She was a very petite really pretty lady that had a neat British accent. She was so small she needed a pillow at her back to reach the pedals. When it was time for her to drive, my guys would swarm around like a bunch of hounds. After Jim Moore started driving for me, Jim's wife Toots put her foot down and said "No more females driving" and that was final. It was fun while it lasted.