E3 Spark Plugs News

Tyler Shepard, the Wheelie Wizzard, is the newest Team E3 Racing winner.

Most days, Tyler Shepard suits up and plies his relatively tame trade as a medical industry sales rep. But upwards of 20 weekends a year, the latest Team E3 Racing Tier 2 winner dons a much flashier getup than his workday jacket and tie, wowing crowds as the “Wheelie Wizzard.”

Shepard was just 14 when he first saw “Wheelie King” Doug Domokos perform at a flattrack race in Celina, Ohio in 1995. The young rider immediately began developing his own daredevil style and within a few years, made his own debut before a crowd. For 13 years now, he’s been performing a family-friendly motorcycle entertainment program showcasing his famous wheelies at major events nationwide.

Just about any rider with a little experience can rev the engine, pop the clutch and grab a wheelie. But riding on that back wheel for any real distance is tricky.

“You have to keep the rear brake on the entire time, then adjust the throttle for how high you want the front wheel to come up,” Shepard told reporters recently.

It’s an art that Shepard has perfected. In fact, in one particularly popular show feature, he rides a Honda XR 50 with no front wheel detached altogether – sometimes flying over the top of a Ford box-van. Not surprisingly, he holds the current world record for the highest wheelie on a 50cc motorcycle.

Shepard talks with reporters during a performance.

Shepard uses four different bikes in his shows. Two are stock Honda CRF 50s. One is a Honda CRF 50 with custom sprocks that allow for performances in small venues. With a modified gear ratio, he can ride a wheelie slower than the average person can walk.

Shepard’s talents have landed him gigs with top-name clients and events including Ripley’s Believe it Or Not, Sports Illustrated, Lucas Oil on the Edge and the Monster Energy Supercross Series. Throughout the 2013 season, he’ll be the featured attraction at the Monster Nation and the Toughest Monster Truck Tour! But his favorite part of performing actually happens between popping those wheelies.

“The people who come out with all of their kids,” he says when asked about the most enjoyable part of his work. “They have stories about when they used to ride, and the kids are telling me about how they have bikes. I just like hearing stories fans tell.”

We’re looking forward to hearing lots of stories of the Wheelie Wizzard’s continued success. From all of us here at E3 Spark Plugs, welcome to the team, Tyler!

Need a new ride? Enter to win one of the motorcycles ridden by Ryan Gossling in his new film, “The Place Beyond the Pines.”

Motorheads take note: If you’ve seen the new Ryan Gossling / Bradley Cooper / Eva Mendes / Ray Liotta film, The Place Beyond the Pines, you’ve no doubt noticed a few nice rides. Now is your chance to own one of them.

Directed by Derek Cianfrance of Blue Valentine fame, The Place Beyond the Pines follows the story of a motorcycle stunt driver Luke Glanton (Gossling) who returns to his hometown of Schenectady, NY, thrilling the locals with his circus cage driving feats. But he’s the one who gets the biggest surprise, when he runs into his old flame, Romina (Eva Mendes) and learns the two have an infant son. Glanton decides to man up and quit the circus business to help care for and raise the boy. But Romina, a sultry waitress with a new man, has serious doubts. Undeterred, Glanton soon learns that mechanics’ work doesn’t quit pay the bills. So, he turns to something else he’s pretty good at – robbing banks.

“The Place Beyond the Pines” is in theaters now.

Cianfrance is a “very unique, special filmmaker” with “unrealistic ideas of what people are capable of,” Gossling recently told reporters of his on-set experience. He was only half joking. Besides zooming around inside a giant spherical cage, barely missing a fellow stunt driver, Gossling also dodges traffic at breakneck speeds in his bank robbery getaway scenes.

We won’t spoil it for you. But suffice it to say that Glanton’s new career doesn’t quite pan out the way he’s hoping. And his lifelong string of bad choices, as evidenced by a scrawling mess of unfortunate tattoos, has enduring effects on his young son’s life.

But back to those bikes… Now is your chance to own one of the motorcycles Gossling rides in the film described by film critics as “an exhilarating, ‘Godfather’-esque multi-generational epic of fathers, sons and consequences.” Click here and follow the steps to enter by the April 9 deadline. From all of us at E3 Spark Plugs – Good luck!

Hey racers and racing crew! There’s still time to register for the 2013 class of Team E3 Racing Sponsorship Contest winners.

E3 Spark Plugs is looking for up-and-coming racing competitors and pit crew members who want to rev up their careers. And as long as it has an engine, it doesn’t matter what you race. Our inaugural class of Team E3 Racing members head for the finish line piloting everything from high-dollar speed boats to riding lawn mowers. Crew competitors have been racing team owners, pit crew managers and mechanics.

We want to hear from career hopefuls who understand not just the track side, but the business and promotions side of professional racing, too. If you’re chosen as a Team E3 Racing winner, you’ll get a publicity boost via the E3 Spark Plugs website blog and Facebook fan page. Plus, we’ll send you $500 in cash, 16 E3 Spark Plugs, and official E3 apparel and decals for you, your team and your ride.

But time is running out. To enter, make sure you’re a fan of the E3 Spark Plugs Facebook Fan Page. Then, click the “Sponsorship Contest” tab, complete the form and click “Submit.” You’ve got until 11:59 p.m. on January 31 to enter (be sure to read all the rules and regs). We’ll announce the winners in February.

Good luck!

Hey, car nuts – What are you hoping for this Christmas?

Christmas is just a week away. Got the car lover you lover covered? E3 Spark Plugs offers a few great gift ideas for the auto enthusiast.

1. A copy of Paul Ingrassia’s Engines of Change, a hard-cover history of the automobile’s profound effects on and reflections of America “from the assembly lines of Henry Ford to the open roads of Route 66, from the lore of Jack Kerouac to the sex appeal of the Hot Rod.”
2. A power boost via the PowerLine PowerCup 200/400 watt mobile inverter with USB power port. It’s great for recharging your Kindle, cell phone and laptop batteries while on the go. And it sports a delicious coffee cup look.
3. A care package. The AAA 70 Piece Explorer Road Assistance Kit is the perfect gift for the young or roadside disaster-prone driver you love. The double-sided carrying bag comes complete with an AAA emergency care guide, heavy duty booster cable, hand-charted dual LED flashlight, a pair of dimpled work gloves, poncho, whistle, one flat head and one Phillips head screwdriver, a roll of duct tape, utility knife, bungee cord, two shop cloths, 10 cable ties and a 45-piece first-aid kit.
4. A game changer. If the auto enthusiast you love is also a serious gamer, he’ll love the Thrustmaster T500RS. The pack includes a steering wheel optimized for PS3 and PC game play and multiple driving sensations, and a pedal console with three adjustable pedals for an amazingly realistic driving experience.
5. A view from the stands. Tickets to most any racing event, from Indy 500 to the Monaco Grand Prix to the local motorsports track event will make any car nut happy.
6. A set of E3 Spark Plugs, of course. Stronger, cleaner, more economical performance.

So, autophiles – What are you hoping to find under the tree or in your stocking Christmas Day? Post your wish list items on the E3 Spark Plugs Facebook fan page.

• Engines of Change

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• PowerLine PowerCup

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• AAA 70 Piece Explorer Road Assistance Kit

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• Thrustmaster T500RS

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• Racing Tickets (Doug James / Shutterstock)

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• E3 Spark Plugs

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Daniel Craig plays it cool in this scene from the latest James Bond flick, Skyfall. But it’s stunt double Robbie “Maddo” Maddison that makes 007 look good in action.

While 007 and the beautiful Bond Girls are the obvious stars of any James Bond flick, E3 Spark Plugs will be eyeing another performer in the new film, Skyfall, as well. None other than Robbie “Maddo” Maddison, Australian Freestyle Motocross star, doubles as cinema’s favorite spy in a particularly impressive scene.

About a quarter of the way into the film, Maddison appears in a motorcycle chase scene that takes place along the nerve-wrackingly narrow roofline walkways of an Istanbul marketplace. Practice took place in an ex-military test facility filled with dirt piles that recreated the shapes of rooftops. But all those hours of practice couldn’t full calm Maddison’s nerves when the director called out, “action!”

“Going to the roof was probably the scariest thing for me,” he said. “Really tight lines and obviously no helmets on.”

Luckily, Maddison has experience on his side. He holds multiple records and is recognized as one of the best FMX riders of all time – a testament to his personal motto: “Face your fears – live your dreams.” He’s known for successfully landing some crazy stunts including jumps clear across Greece’s Corinth Canal and, this past New Year’s Eve, the San Diego Bay. After landing over 391ft in practice, he came just shy of his 400-feet goal, thanks to foggy weather, damp conditions and less traction. He landed 378 feet, nine inches in the tandem jump alongside American snowmobile racer Levi LeVallee.

So what is 007′s stunt double riding in those daring scenes? A dressed-up 250 CRF Honda, which Stunt Coordinator Gary Powell calls “out of the box, one of the best bikes you can get.” Check out this behind-the-scenes video to see Maddison in action. Next up, we’ll take a look at a few of the coolest Bond cars ever.

Love creepy, campy horror movies with gags, gore and great rides? “Monster Man” is one of E3 Spark Plugs picks for frightfully fun Halloween flicks.

Halloween brings out the crazy costumes and harrowing horror films. But it’s not just houses that are haunted. Some of the best creepy, campy and downright funny fright flicks feature cars hell-bent on devilish destruction. Here are a few of E3 Spark Plugs‘ top scary car flick picks for this Halloween season, starring a classic hearse, a monster-driven monster truck, an 80s-tastic streetcar and a shape shifter than can take on just about any automotive form.

• Super Hybrid, 2011: When a mysterious, sleek black car is brought into the Chicago police impound garage after a deadly late-night accident, the on-call mechanics soon realize that something’s not quite right. The parts don’t feel metallic and it apparently runs not on fuel, but on blood. As it starts to terrorize the crew, the true horror is revealed – this shape-shifter can take the form of any make and model, turning the plot into a deadly game of hide (in plain sight)-and-seek.

• The Hearse, 1980: Starting over after a messy divorce, the lovely Jane Hardy moves into the home she inherits from her late aunt in the small town of Blackford. Going through her aunt’s things, Jane soon learns the secrets that the woman had kept from family, but that were all too well known by the local townsfolk – she was devil-worshipping, witchcraft-practicing old lady. That’s a bit of information Jane might have appreciated pre-relocation. Pretty soon, she finds herself followed by a creepy, classic hearse and a mysterious driver. Turns out that upon her death, the hearse carrying the aunt’s body crashed, but no sign of the driver or of the coffin were ever found. Could it be that she and her post-mortem escort are back? Or might the young hottie Jane has begun dating actually be the crazed, creepy chauffer?

• The Wraith, 1986: Big hair and big scares abound in this 80s-tastic horror flick starring a young and handsome pre-meltdown Charlie Sheen. Set in an Arizona desert town, the local thugs led by PackardWalsh (Nick Cassavetes) force drivers to drag race and jack their rides. Dead-set on winning any and everything he wants, Walsh stabs to death the neighborhood decent kid, Jamie, and moves in on Jamie’s girlfriend, Keri. Enter the mysterious new guy, Jake, a motorcycle driving king of cool with a sleek, black car that can’t be beat on the drag racing scene. Jake makes his own romantic moves on Keri and takes Jamie’s sweet brother under his wing. Pretty soon, Walsh’s criminal gang starts dropping like flies. By the way, watch for the roller skating waitress – an unknown and uncredited hottie named Brooke Burke.

• Monster Man, 2003: This one ain’t for the cinematic snobs. If you don’t take your horror too seriously, Monster Man is a guaranteed laugh. Geeky Adam and knucklehead Harley hit the road in their 1970 Chevrolet Kingswood bent on crashing the wedding of Adam’s ex-girlfriend, Betty-Ann. They stop in at a bar and Harley makes fun of patrons watching monster truck rally on TV. Bad move. Soon after they leave, a giant monster truck shows up and drives them off the road. The bumbling duo makes the mistake of siphoning gas from a seemingly abandoned RV and thinks their luck is back on track when they pick up Sarah a hot hitchhiker dressed for a night at the club. Another bad move. The ensuing antics include severed body parts, hotel road kill, a deformed monster truck-driving psycho and a revelation that the lovely Sarah is not what she seems – plus a fantastic, finned 1962 Cadillac hearse. Gags, grossness and gore galore.

What’s your favorite movie about a haunted ride? Post your killer car flick picks on the E3 Spark Plugs Facebook fan page.

Phil “No-Hands Man” Comar set out to ride 525 miles on his Harley Davidson motorcycle – never touching the handlebar, and all for a good cause.

“Look, Mom – No hands!” Remember saying that to your momentarily nerve-wracked mother while zooming down the driveway on your 10-speed or dirt bike with your hands in the air? We here at E3 Spark Plugs sure do. And we’ve got the skinned-knee scars to prove it. But Phil Comar just one-upped our boneheaded bicycle moves in a big way.

Adrian, Michigan resident Phil Comar set out this past Saturday to ride his Harley Davidson motorcycle 525 miles from the south side of the Mackinac Bridge in Michigan, to Covington, Kentucky – without ever touching the handlebars. The goal was to not only set a new world record, but more importantly, to raise funds and awareness in honor the memory of his late father, Robert Comar, who died of complications with Parkinson’s disease in 2008.

“His strength of character and perseverance in his struggle with this disease gives me my personal drive and determination to do whatever I can to help find a cure for others,” says Comar, who has done his no-hands benefitting the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research the past three years. “I feel it is the only thing that will help offset the helplessness I felt as I watched him progressively diminish over the years until he was unable to do the simplest things in life that most of us take for granted.”

Comar did his first no-handed ride in 2010, traveling 314 miles from Michigan to Ohio. Last year, he bumped up the record riding 327 miles. He fell one touch and less than a mile short of this year’s 525-mile goal, thanks to a bridge being painted in Brighton, Michigan – 249 miles into his trip. The project had traffic at a standstill, forcing Comar to grab hold of his Harley and stop.

Still, the trip was a success for 63-year-old Comar who, ironically, is a motorcycle safety instructor for the state of Michigan. He raised $2,000 for Parkinson’s research and aims to keep raising funds with a $25,000 goal.

Before you jump on your own bike to see if you can make it no-handed to the grocery store, keep in mind that Comar has been riding motorcycles for 50 years and training himself to steer without using his hands for the past 20 years. In other words – Don’t try this at home.

E3 Spark Plugs congratulates Comar on a good effort for a great cause.

The 2012 Motorcycle Cannonball Endurance Run, a coast-to-coast ride featuring only pre-1930 motorcycles. Photo by J. Geary Morton.

For 16 consecutive days, 101 die-hard bikers took to America’s highways for a scenic coast-to-coast vintage motorcycle ride. Riders completing the 2012 Cannonball Motorcycle Endurance Run rolled 3,900 miles from the home of the newly opened Motorcyclpedia museum in Newburgh, New York to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco – all on motorcycles made before 1930.

Along the way, riders cruised through a dozen national parks and forests, the Great Lakes of Michigan, the Mississippi River, the Black Hills of South Dakota, Mount Rushmore, the Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, Yellowstone National Park, the Rocky Mountains, the High Desert in Oregon, the Avenue of the Giants and the Pacific Coast Highway. What a ride!

Erwin “Cannonball” Baker, 1912.

The event commemorates Erwin “Cannonball” Baker’s historic 1922 coast-to-coast ride on a -cylinder Ace motorcycle that set a record at 22 hours and 52 minutes. Baker was a vaudeville performer who turned to racing after winning a dirt-track motorcycle race sometime around 1904 and went on to become a famous motorcycle and automobile racing driver and organizer, as well as the first NASCAR commissioner. He was known for his some 140 record-setting point-to-point drives during which he was paid to promote products of various motorcycle and automobile manufacturers.

This winner of this year’s Motorcycle Cannonball Endurance Run is Brad Wilmarth who rode a 1913 Excelsior. He’s one of just 19 riders who completed the trip on perfect points, having covered every mile of the course within the time limit for each class. A rowdy but respectable group of 101 riders from throughout the United States, Canada, France, Italy, Australia, Germany, Ireland, Poland and the U.K. participated.

Did you ride in the Cannonball this year? Or do you have a vintage motorcycle you’d like to show off? Post your pics and stories on the E3 Spark Plugs Facebook fan page.

Jeremy Higgins got hooked on dirt bike racing at age three when his dad surprised him with a PW50 dirt bike.

Nineteen-year-old Jeremy Higgins has been slinging dirt since age three when his father surprised him with a PW50 bike.

“From the beginning, I was attracted to it,” Higgins recently told reporters. “I had the training wheels off my PW50 before they came off my bicycle. After a year or two of riding around the yard with my dad, he took me to my first race. Ever since then, I’ve been hooked.”

Today, he’s owning the competitive flat track racing scene and, as part of the Project K Racing team, has been instrumental in developing KTM’s flat track machines. The Bergen, NY native turned pro in 2008 and earned his national number as an Expert Rookie in 2010.

Team E3 Racing winner Jeremy Higgins

Higgins races a 2010 Yamaha yz450f in the AMA Pro Grand National Singles Championship Series, and a KTM 950 and Suzuki SV650 for running the AMA Pro Grand National Twins Series on the Waters Autobody Racing team.

The 2010/2011 season proved a turning point for Higgins. He traveled across the country attending dozens of races and, at a main event in Prescott, Arizona, landed his first ever top 10 finish in Grand National racing.

“I learned a lot,” says Higgins, who recently graduated college as a powersport technician and loves to spend his off-weekends on upstate New York’s motocross tracks. “I cannot wait for next season to keep moving forward and making progress in the series. We have a strong team that never gives up and loves to learn and move forward as a team.”

Throughout the 2012 season, he’ll be competing in the AMA Pro Flat Track Grand National Twins class and the Expert Singles class throughout the United States.

E3 Spark Plugs welcomes Higgins to Team E3 Racing!

Shawn Lawless' Rocket is the first EV to breat 200mph in a quarter mile.

It’s long been said that electric vehicles just can’t match the speed of gasoline-fueled rides. But longtime motorcycle racer and builder Shawn Lawless just put that notion to rest. Earlier this month, his Rocket EV bike hit 201 miles per hour in 6.94 seconds in an exhibition sprint at Virginia Motorsports Park.

Originally built in 2010 with help from the famous Orange County Choppers in a two-episode television special, the Rocket made history as the first EV to break the quarter mile in less than seven seconds. The driver was Larry “Spiderman” McBride, a 30-year veteran in racing supercharged, nitro-burning motorcycles (His moniker comes by way of an announcer’s comment at the 1980 NHRA U.S. National about McBride’s style of crawling around on his motorcycle to keep it in the groove).

The Rocket boasts a 150-pound, 1.2 k Wh battery and runs on a 13-inch DC motor with a custom Zilla controller. Lawless and his crew, which includes McBride and his brother Steve McBride of Cycle Specialties, have been tinkering with the bike since its 2010 debut. But a recent engine overhaul made way for the record-breaking feat.

E3 Spark Plugs congratulates Lawless, McBride and company. To get the best performance from your bike, make sure you stock it with a set of E3 motorcycle spark plugs.