Jeffrey K. "Dice" Disinger

With a name like Disinger, it was easy to inherit a nickname and Jeff did. His father had most of his life been called “Dice.” So of course by the time Jeff was ten years old his friends picked up the same and from then on it was “Dice.” Most of his friends today could not even tell you his real name.

Jeff’s mom worked at the local hospital while his dad worked as a sign painter at the families local sign shop. Growing up the son of a sign painter, Dice quickly picked up the talent of being an artist. I guess you can say Dice comes from a long line of artists. His grandfather was also a sign painter as was his father before him and his father before him was also an artist in Germany. So being a fifth generation artist came in handy.

As early as Dice can remember, Evel Knievel was his first inspiration. To emulate his hero on something other than a bicycle Dice acquired a 1974 Honda XR75 by bartering a trade for doing some airbrush work on the trunk of a ’67 Camaro. The bike came to him in boxes. It took Dice two days to get it together and running. Dice learned very early on that his skills as an artist could get him all kinds of stuff.

When Dice wasn’t busy jumping garbage cans, 20’ wide ditches or whatever the local kids could scrounge up, he was running or cruising his neighborhood popping in and out of all the neighbors’ garages, if they were working in them. Dice said he was very lucky to grow up in a neighborhood where so many cool guys lived that were awesome wrenches and willing to share their knowledge with a kid that hadn’t reached his teens yet. These guys worked on cars, bike, snowmobiles and anything that moved.

As Dice got a little older he started messing with the bigger kids on motorcycles. When he was 15 years old, Dice wedged a 350 4-stoke engine into his Works CR 125 Honda chassis. He remembers all the guys laughing at him but it worked as a good strength training exercise with all the extra weight. When all the local boys were drag racing in the nearby fields, Dice always got the jump on them.

Dice’s brother had a friend, Jim who owned a Ford Maverick with a four speed Boss 302 squeezed in. While at the local drag strip, Dice told him that he was a terrible racer. Jim said, “If you think you can do better…” So he let Dice make a pass. Dice went three tenths quicker. Six passes later, Dice was a full second quicker than Jim. That day at the track encouraged Dice to buy his neighbors ’70 Mustang, which Dice still owns today. When Dice turned 17, his neighbor gave him a box full of performance parts and said, “Here ya go, when you get it all together stop by and we will fine tune it.” Well, little did Dice know that would lead to a future in drag racing. Every penny Dice made went into racing his car. He took it from a 12 second car down into the 9’s in three years. Then came college and the car sat for over 20 years. The photo below is a result of an extreme make over once the car came out of the mothballs. It’s now a tube chassis with a 347 Pro-Mod engine.

In high school Dice played just about every sport but excelled in basketball and track. He once trained in the 400 intermediate hurdles as an Olympic hopeful. That’s the same time he decided to grow his hair out, dye it bright red and get several tattoos. His coaches freaked out. Not so weird today but completely unheard of in mid 80’s. The basketball coach gave Dice a choice; cut and color his hair, cover up the tattoos or quit the team. The track coach was not as threatening but the fact that everyone was treating Dice so badly he was freaking out himself. Dice was high jumping 6’-10” at the time and had set records in 400 intermediate hurdles. Aside from his success Dice quit sports because he felt the sports world was just not ready for his personality.

Dice joined a band and grew his hair to his waist to fill the void of sports. His band, Valentino, played all over the northeast. Dice played bass and sang. Dice was once approached by Ted Templeman, who produced Van Halen, about recording a record. Not knowing who he was at the time, Dice blew him off and walked away. Oops, Dice said that was not very smart on his part. He got to hang out with guys from Motley Crue, The Scorpions, George Lynch, Dokken, Bang, Tango, Cinderella and Bon Jovi. Dice’s last band was called Jadoo Madre. They were on the verge of signing a record deal with Polygram Records when Dice just walked away. He said 12 years of growing hair, playing music and chasing girls had ran its course and it was time to move on.

It was time for the circle of life to bring Dice back to his roots. Dice and his dad started their own sign shop in Syracuse, New York in the early 90’s and worked together for twenty years until his dad’s retirement. Following his dad’s retirement Dice turned his pigment profession into a different art form. He is now a micropigmentologist, aka, tattooist. He also still does custom airbrush painting, lettering and sign painting on the side.

Over the course of the years, Dice continued to drag race, more bikes than cars. Dice remembers that when he was in his early twenties he drew up an electric dragbike as a concept. A friend who was an electrical engineer said it was cool but that technology did not exist. Fast forward to 2007 to an NHRA event at Maple Grove. Dice was strolling the bike pits when he came across Pro Stock legend Paul Gast of Fast by Gast. Paul remembered Dice from back when Dice used one of his Lectron carburetors with a power enrichener to be the first for a Harley. Paul asked where he had been and why he stopped racing.

Paul’s conversation led to Dice going home and start building his electric bike, the Predator. Dice contacted his electronic genius friend, Ed Tucker to help with the power plant. He took an old Pro Stock bike that he says has been modified more times than he would like to remember. It’s an old KZ body that Dice has had to remold many different times to keep up with the wheel base changes and different batteries/motors. The bike is a 296 volt nominal bike with an Evnetics Soliton 1000 amp controller and one 7.5” GE Lawless prepped motor.

Dice said they got off to a very slow start with runs in the 15-second range. Over the next few weeks they got down in the 13’s, then 12’s and decided to attend their first EV event in Ohio. That’s where he met Shawn Lawless with his infamous AGNus bike. Dice had beaten everyone until he lined up against Shawn who ran a 9.35 flying past Dice. He told Shawn, “if you put that motor and battery pack in my bike it would fly!” His reply was, “do you think it will fit? My shop isn’t that far.” Dice said that is the kind of guy he is. From that point on they became good friends and Dice credit’s Shawn for getting him where he is today.

Shawn Lawless is the self made guru of electric drag racing who has been featured on Orange County Chopper’s show. He owns the electric bike called “Rocket” which our own Larry “Spiderman” McBride rode to a NEDRA (National Electric Drag Racing Association) record of 6.94 @ 201.37mph this past May. Dice currently holds the 300 volt and under record at 7.84 @ 162mph set recently in Arizona. The intermediate times were 1.21 60’, 4.923 @ 141 at the eighth. He said it was not easy to get to that point and God knows he spent every penny he had to make it happen. Dice is also planning on running a ZX6 based bike with a 10” over swingarm at ECTA mile this year. The photo below is Dice sitting on Lawless’ bike, the Rocket.

Dice’s immediate goal is to have a live TV dual with McBride and make electric drag racing history. NHRA is taking notice of their accomplishments and Dice is in hopes they can make the pass at an NHRA national event. Regardless of what happens Dice said he owes most of his motivation in life to his dad. His dad always saw room for improvement in everything Dice did and constantly pushed his talents. Dice hopes to follow in his dad’s footsteps and lead by example to all who watch him. He said it’s corny, but every day is a gift. He wished more people lived like that.

Other Areas of Interest

Residence: Cicero, New York

Spouse: Ashley

Children: Taylor, Keirsten, Juliann, Tasia, Conner

Occupation: Micropigmentologist…aka…tattooist…custom airbrush painting/lettering, sign painting

Home track: EMPIRE RACEWAY in Rochester, New York (about an hour and a half from home and is an awesome track for hook and shut down.

Team Name: ELECTRAFUNK RACING AND LAWLESS EV RACING are a combined team!

Crew Members: Ed Tucker, Nick Julian, Ryan Elderbroom, Shawn Lawless.

Sponsors: Lawless EV Racing, Evnetics

Accomplishments:

• This bike took me four months to build and one week after finishing it, we raced our first NEDRA event! We took 2nd place with 144 volts of lead acid batteries that weight in at 360lbs!

• 2 months later at the next NEDRA event power of DC in Hagerstown, Maryland @ Mason Dixon Dragway we took second again with a BEST OF SHOW HONORS.

• Two weeks later we filmed the show PASSTIME on the SPEED CHANNEL. it still runs today quite often!

• 2011 POWER OF DC NEDRA EVENT we got our first place and set the world record for a motorcycle running NiMH batterires.with a 10.45 pass.

• 2011 new pair of Lawless prepped 7.5 GE motors/flightpower lithium batteries and a Godzilla controller we made our first pass with a 9.00@ 140mph at half power!

• One month after a 40-50-mph gust of wind blew me into a guardrail in north ohio…we set the NEDRA/WORLD RECORD for the DMC/A class under 300volts at 8.60@143.95 mph. my hand was severly crushed that month before and still far from 100%. first place at the syracuse indoor show for 2010. now one week after the NEDRA/BOOKMANS spring thaw EVent in tuscon arizona.we run head to head with the killacycle. we ran a new world record pass of 7.84 @ 162 mph in the DMC / A CLASS FOR UNDER 300 VOLTS…

Goals: We plan on getting the bike into the low 7 second range before a new chassis is in order. plan on going up in voltage and hope to be the first pro-stock electric NHRA bike to qualify

Interest outside of racing: when I’m not racing…my kids/family take up a lot of time…lol..go figure…girls! I do custom airbushing on most anything.

Favorite foods: Pizza is my weakness

Favorite movie: I love the Underworld Series but the PREDATOR rules. Hellraiser also

Daily drivers: my daily rides…1970 blown Pro-Mod mustang…first car! 1969 Austin Mini Cooper dropped on a ‘89 Honda CRX chassis with full cage, blower and nitrous, 1969 Valkyrie GT-40 with supercharged small block Ford with 22 point tube chassis. 2000 Excursion, ‘95 Explorer rounds out the stable.

First motorcycle: 1974 Honda XR 75…but my 1973 CB350 was my first street bike

Hero: my dad…first and then my good friend Nick Julian, Sr….kind of got me through my younger years. Evil, Elmer Trett, Larry McBride.