E3 Spark Plugs News

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 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!

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.

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.

  
 
 

Here at E3 Spark Plugs, we love a great reunion story. But for Ed Church and his beloved 1958 Harley Davidson motorcycle, it’s the reunion that almost wasn’t.

Church bought his Harley, which he described as “the most beautiful think I ever saw,” back in the late 1960s when he was a high school sophomore in Montana. This was back in the day when the choices were limited to Harleys and Indians and “the whole rite of passage as a young man was trying to start one,” Church says.

He proudly rode his Harley for 13 years before change arrived in a tiny, pink package. The birth of his daughter forced the sale of his beloved bike – a story all too familiar to many a speedster dad.

“I knew I had made a mistake,” Church says of selling the bike, a gut-wrencher that would stick with him for the next three decades.” I always wondered what would come if I ever found it again, but I never had much hope.”

Ah, but then came eBay. The wonders of technology not around back when Church’s Harley seemingly rode off into the sunset would provide a whole new chapter in this automotive love story. Nearly 32 years to the day that Church sold his bike, he saw it again – in the dim light of a computer screen on an eBay listing. He recognized it right away, and the VIN confirmed it. But the reunion Church longed for would prove elusive.

“I bid what I thought it was worth and I didn’t get it. I lost it,” Church said. Figuring the odds of one more chance were slim to none, Church tried to put it out of his mind. But a year later, the bike again popped up on an eBay auction.

“This time, I bid what it was worth to me,” Church said. And soon, he was back on the bike that had haunted his thoughts for decades. “You never stop at a stop sign that somebody doesn’t want to tell you about the one that got away… I’m the guy that got it back.”

Church tells his story in an eBay video feature. Grab a hankie, give it a watch and post your own stories of “the one that got away” on the E3 Spark Plugs Facebook fan page.

You’ve heard the saying, “no need to reinvent the wheel.” But that’s just what a group of engineering students at San Jose University in California are doing. And we here at E3 Spark Plugs are wondering if this might be the next big thing in automotive design – theoretically, anyway.

Inspired by the self-balancing technology used in developing the Segway personal transport and a Tokyo-built balancing robot (and perhaps that Audi RSQ concept from I, Robot), three mechanical engineering students set out to apply the same principles to a motorcycle device. Max Ratner, Henry Li and Andrew Parmar went through a slew of design sketches before firing on the one you see above, featuring two tube cage-enclosed massive spheres in place of boring ol’ tires.

“This is more of a proof of concept,” Parmar said, acknowledging that the prospect of roadways full of sphere-cycles is more likely to be seen in a Hollywood sci-fi flick long before it’s experienced in reality. “We want to show that something like this is actually possible.”

The prototype’s industrial rubber-covered carbon fiber and fiberglass spheres are controlled by three electric motors and some pretty cool software. Potential pros are zero turning radius and the ability to immediately change direction and move perpendicularly, which would take some serious angst out of parallel parking and perhaps help avoid crashes. Some say it could make riding safer as the spheres can’t suddenly turn sideways and jackknife as on a traditional bike. Shperical wheels also could have practical applications for other machinery types such as forklifts. But there’s still a lot of work to be done, particularly when it comes to making the spheres safe on wet and bumpy roads.

“We’re taking it one step at a time,” said Ratner, whose team still is tweaking the software. “Road applications are farther down the road and will require further R&D.”

What do you think? Are spherical wheels the future of automotive design? If safety issues were addressed, would you drive on them? Post your thoughts on the E3 Spark Plugs Facebook fan page. And just for kicks, here’s that spherical-wheeled Audi RSQ in I, Robot action.

 

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!

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.

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.

 

Freestyle motocross meets Broadway meets pyromania in the 2012 Nuclear Cowboyz tour. And we here at E3 Spark Plugs are looking forward to this wild show that pushes the extreme into the certifiably insane.

The tour features many of the top names in extreme sports including 2011 Winter X-Games medalist Caleb Moore, X Games 17 medalists Ronnie Faisst, Adam Jones and Mike Mason, plus world-class medalist riders Taka Higashino, Beau Bamburg, Derek Garland, Nixey Danielson, Brody Wilson, Jimmy Fitzpatrick, Dustin Miller, Wes Agee, Matt Buyten, Geoff Aaron, Keith Wineland, Derek Guetter, and Colton Moore.

Doing what they do best, the legendary Nuclear Cowboyz FMX tribes, the Soldiers of Havoc and Metal Mulisha, play out an epic futuristic battle story of two tribes fighting for survival against the evil Tempest and her Cyborg Army in war-torn Los Angeles in the year 2150. The show features battle scenes played out via amazing choreographed motocross stunts backed by a pyrotechnics and laser display and synchronized to a thumping heavy metal, rock alternative and electronic dubstep soundtrack. And yes – there’s even a snowmobile jump.

This year’s show promises a stepped-up degree of difficulty in the stunts performed by medal-winning athletes, producers say. Nuclear Cowboyz hits 11 North American cities on the 2012 tour kicking off Friday night in Baltimore, MD and continuing through April 15. VIP Fallout Zone tickets get you premium seating and a meet and greet with the stars. They’re expected to sell out quickly, so if you’re a major motocross fan, buy your tickets soon.

Plan to see a Nuclear Cowboyz show? Post your pics on the E3 Facebook fan page and be sure to stock your bike with E3 motorcycle spark plugs or Spark Plugs for a motocross-worthy ride.

 

The 2012 Monster Energy AMA Supercross Championship Series revs up Saturday night at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, CA. All eyes will be on 2011 champ Ryan Villopoto as he begins his fight to defend his title against a full slate of the world’s top riders. And he’ll start that fight with a hard-charging bid to become only the sixth rider in history to win the series’ season opener in back-to-back years.

Villopoto also is the current AMA National Motocross Series champion and the Motocross of Nations champ, and he made headlines in 2011 for his utter decimation of the competition in the Monster Energy Cup. He dominated the field over the course of three 10-lap main events to take home the Monster Million – the biggest purse in the sport’s history. Rumor has it the Poulsbo, WA native, who had married the beautiful Kristen Young just days before, postponed his plans for a South Pacific honeymoon to compete for the Monster Million. We’re betting his bride didn’t mind.

His amazing 2011 season has made Villopoto the man to beat in 2012. But he’s got strong contenders. Chad Reed came in second in the SX championship last year and no doubt has his eye on the top podium spot this season. James Stewart has been loud and proud about his intentions to knock seven-time Supercross Class champ Jeremy McGrath from his title as the all-time winningest rider before moving on to four-wheel competition. McGrath currently boasts 72 supercross wins and Stewart is aiming for 73 before making the leap to NASCAR. And Ryan Dungey plans to capitalize on his reputation as one of the fastest motorcycle riders on the planet – a rep he earned in just two SX season.

E3 Spark Plugs congratulates Villopoto on an amazing 2011 season and looks forward to a thrill-packed 2012 season! Make sure your ride is competition-ready with E3 motorcycle spark plugs.

2012 Monster Energy AMA Supercross Championship Series Schedule

• January 7 – Angel Stadium – Anaheim, CA
• January 14 – Chase Field – Phoenix, AZ
• January 21 – Dodger Stadium – Los Angeles, CA
• January 28 – Overstock.com Stadium – Oakland, CA
• February 4 – Angel Stadium – Anaheim, CA
• February 11 – Qualcomm Stadium – San Diego, CA
• February 18 – Cowboys Stadium – Arlington/Dallas, TX
• February 25 – Georgia Dome – Atlanta, GA
• March 3 – Edward Jones Dome – St. Louis, MO
• March 10 – Daytona Int’l Speedway – Daytona, FL*
• March 17 – Lucas Oil Stadium – Indianapolis, IN
• March 24 – Rogers Centre – Toronto, ON, Canada
• March 31 – Reliant Stadium – Houston, TX
• April 14 – Louisiana Super Dome – New Orleans LA
• April 21 – Qwest Field – Seattle, WA
• April 28 – Rice-Eccles Stadium – Salt Lake City, UT
• May 5 – Sam Boyd Stadium – Las Vegas, NV

So how did you ring in the New Year? Major props if you powered into 2012 anywhere near the way pro snowmobiler Levi LaVallee and FMX rider Robbie “Maddo” Maddison did – with record-breaking jumps across an icy San Diego harbor on a snowmobile and a motorbike at Red Bull’s New Year-No Limits event.

The two rode side-by-side with a shared goal of breaking their respective sports’ longest-jump records. Both succeeded fantastically. Maddison beat his 351-feet, 3-inches certified world record with an impressive jump of 378 feet, nine inches. He came a bit short of his 400-foot goal, likely because wet conditions nixed his 100-mph launch speed goal. But the massive leap proved a record breaker and a crowd pleaser nonetheless. That Maddo can pull off any feat of this sort is nothing short of a miracle if you know his history. Shortly after graduating high school, Maddison came down with viral meningitis and viral encephalitis. The sicknesses caused temporary paralysis and blinded Maddison in one eye. But he recovered and never looked back as he pushed his motocross passion and went pro.

Meanwhile, LaVallee had his own point to prove that night. He was out to break his record of 361-feet, hit last year in a practice jump that nearly killed him. LaVallee suffered collapsed lungs, a broken pelvis, cracked ribs and a concussion a year ago and has since rebounded in ways that many – including LaVallee’s doctors – thought impossible. To say he “broke” the record doesn’t do the guy justice. He SLAMMED last year’s record by a full 51 feet, crossing the harbor with a 412-foot jump. If you’re doing the numbers, that’s 52 feet longer than an NFL football field.

So what, pray tell, drives a man to repeat the feat that nearly put him six feet under?

“It was something I had to overcome,” LaVallee told ESPN. Otherwise it was going to haunt me the rest of my life… After last year and being out I was like, ‘Man, you just missed out on the coolest opportunity.’ And to be here today and to be able to land an over 400-foot jump… you can’t make it any better.”

From all of us here at E3 Spark Plugs, congrats to both LaVallee and Maddison. Got your eye on breaking your own personal best record? Stock your ride with E3 motorcycle spark plugs or snowmobile spark plugs. Be bold, but be careful. And have an awesome 2012.