SEMA & EECMM 2011 – Mazda Events and Car Shows East to West!

The CorkSport team has been on the road this week first sponsoring and attending the 5th annual EECMM (Epic East Coast Mazda Meet) held in Robbinsville, NC (think Tail of the Dragon) and then onto Las Vegas for the SEMA (specialty Equipment Market Association) show where more than 100,000 attendees and 2000 exhibitors met for four days at the largest annual automotive gathering and car show.

Appropriately named, EECMM was truly an epic event. Mazda enthusiasts from all over the east met up in Robbinsville, NC for five full days of cruising stretches of the famous Hwy 129, deals gap, a car show with awards and plenty of raffle prizes and evenings of BBQ’s and parties at the smoky mountain mansion with no shortage of good times had by all.

If you are not already familiar, the Tail of the Dragon is an 11 mile stretch with 318 curves and is America’s number one sports car road. The nearby Cherohala Skyway is another 60 miles of scenic mountain highway for the driving enthusiast to enjoy a more leisurely ride with it’s long, sweeping corners and scenic views.

CorkSport spent Saturday with the Epic crew. The car show featured about 60 cars and CorkSport was on hand with giveaways for the all of the attendees. Following the show the group went out for a ride on the Tail of the Dragon run while CorkSport prepared back at the mansion for a focus group. We then sat down with a group of customers and got the unique opportunity to gain feedback on what we are doing that works and what we can do to improve our products and services for the Mazda community. We stayed for some of the evening’s festivities, but had to run so we could catch an early flight out and onto Las Vegas the following morning.

What a great group of people and awesome event! If you haven’t made it to EECMM yet, you need to go! Keep posted on 2012’s event and stay connected on the EECMM facebook page.

Back to the other side of the country, SEMA kicked off on Monday.

Mazda had the MX-5 Spyder on display at this year’s show. This Lighterweight version of the Miata ditches the heavier retractable roof and in its place had a single-panel bikini soft top made by Haartz. Weight savings came in other forms as well with a light weight lithium ion racing battery and light weight Advan RS wheels. It got a the 2.0 liter 4-cylinder turbo enabled biofuel engine which promotes the greener direction Mazda is moving in.

As promised, the concept Mazda 2 turbo was also on display at the show with a Speed3 263-horsepwer turbocharged, direct-injected MZR 2.3 Liter engine under the hood.

The body gets a track-ready look, thanks to a body kit, some ground effects and the Sonic White tri-coat paint job with a black and green accents. Also included on the concept car were HR coilovers, CorkSport Mazda 2 Sway Bars, CorkSport front tower brace, CorkSport rear chassis brace, CorkSport rear torsion bar, a modified CorkSport SRI from a Mazdaspeed 3 and Yokohama Neova 215/40/17 tires with OZ racing wheels.

If you can’t wait for the Mazdaspeed2 to go into full production, the concept car built by Autobarn for the one lap of America race is available for purchase for an astounding ticket price of $94,999.

The booth also had a slightly less modded Mazda2 tuned by 3dCarbon, a MX-5 Super 20 custom and a classic Cosmo on display.

Flat-finished paint was all the rage at this year’s show and was embraced by hotrods and custom cars alike. The level of flatness/gloss ranged in scale from matte to reduced sheen and was available in every color from pearl white to bright orange.

There was a lot to be seen at this show. It could not possibly all be covered in this post, but an honorable mention extends to the new Lamborghini LP700-4 Aventador in the Pirelli booth. It has a v12 engine and can achieve 700 HP and top speeds of 270 mph. It was hard to resist falling in love with it!

The show continues today with Derrick still in attendance who I am sure will follow this post with some thoughts of his own from the show.

It’s been a long week, but it is always great to get out and and get to know our customers better, put faces to names, and find out what’s going on in the community.

Gwynne –

CorkSport Customer Collaboration – Camber Plate Development Process

Our customers are our lifeblood. We live by this understanding each and every day and appreciate that you put your trust in CorkSport products and choose CorkSport brand parts for your Mazda performance needs. Proof? Many of you may get a sense of this from the quality of our customer interactions. Hopefully, you find our staff easy to reach, courteous, helpful, and knowledgeable.

From our transparent shipping costs and our dedicated staff and customer service, to our rewards program for our loyal customers, and customer collaboration efforts, we want to demonstrate how grateful we are for your business each and every day.

I’d like to take this post as an opportunity to expand on the customer collaboration concept. We’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth revisiting with a fresh example.

We’ve conducted numerous focus groups with our customers. In those groups we’ve discussed how our customers want to be involved in the product development process. Overwhelmingly we’ve been told you want to see the development process. You want to see what’s in the pipeline and have a chance to give feedback on the design. Our best most recent example of our efforts to expand our customer’s role in the product development process is our soon to be released camber plates for Mazdaspeed3.

Our knowledgebase is a repository for all sorts of information. For the camber plate development process, we’ve posted several articles in our knowledgebase. Brief summaries are presented below. The interested reader can view each article for more details.

Article 1:
The idea for camber plates came from two customers, Eric & Todd, who turned in product ideas. Our staff reviewed the merits of their suggestion and decided to pursue it.

Article 2:
Our initial design concept was posted for feedback.

Article 3:
Prototype parts were made from the drawings. Ordinarily we’d make one set for testing. This time, we made several extra sets so that if Todd and Eric wanted to get involved in Beta testing, we were positioned to take advantage of the opportunity. After installation and testing in house, Todd took us up on the offer to test a set of the camber plates.

Both Todd and Eric gave us great feedback and even hit the forums and started a discussion. We learned that many people were apprehensive to cut their strut tower to allow for camber adjustment. From our experience we are comfortable cutting sheet metal on a brand new car, understandably many people are not! We returned to the drawing board with the intention to eliminate that requirement. Success!

Article 4:
The biggest problem we had to resolve at this point was spring interference when using the Mazda Genuine struts. This limits negative camber to around -1.5 degrees. We solved this problem by revising our recently released lowering springs to have a tighter wound coils up front.

In summary, we made these changes to the original design as a result of our collaboration efforts with our customers:
• Recessed design to remove the requirement to enlarge the hole in the strut tower.
• Larger strut bolts to reduce camber variation from removal and reinstallation.
• Longer strut bolts to allow for strut brace installations.
• Custom lowering springs to allow for more than -1.5 degree which is limited by the factory chassis using struts.

We expect to release the camber plates and revised lowering springs in early 2012.

Thank you to everyone for their feedback. Special thanks to Todd and Eric for their participation in the development process.

Rich-

Featured Car of the Month October 2011 – Will Buck

Former Army Sergeant and 25 year old Iraq War Veteran, Will Buck caught our attention a little while ago when he sent along an impressive graph from a dyno of his 2010 Mazdaspeed 3 that logged 314hp and 349 torque with a stock turbo.

This Speed 3 is his first Mazda, but this Buffalo NY native has been modding cars since he started driving. Even his first Honda Civic ended up with a Zex Nitrous Kit on it.

After blowing up a couple motors on his supercharged Scion TC, Will finally decided it was time for something with a little better performance and reliability and his research led him right to the Mazdaspeed 3.

Since purchasing his car some of the modifications he has added include a CorkSport Power Series Short Ram Intake, CorkSport TMIC, CorkSport Downpipe, and CorkSport Racepipe along with 50/50 E85 and 93 Octane, Autotech HPFP Internals, Forge V2 BPV and JBR EGR Blockoff. He also has a self-tuned Cobb Accessport @23 PSI.

He recently won the highest horsepower stock turbo MS3 in Georgia award, but is ready to upgrade the turbo to a GTX3071 as his next project.

“I live just outside of Fort Benning, GA now and there is not much of a tuning following out here so I drive the two hours to Atlanta monthly to stay involved with fellow NATOR Georgia members,” said Will. “I spend my free time split between working on the car, home improvement, the Army Reserves and I spend a fair amount of time being active on mazdaspeedforums.org

He is also passing along his love for speed to his two year old daughter who loves riding in the Mazdaspeed and is often egging her dad on by saying “go, go, go, go,go!” If Will’s dyno chart has anything to say about it, his speed 3 doesn’t disappoint when she asks him to floor it!

Gwynne –

Product Release! CorkSport 2001-2003 Mazda/Mazdaspeed Protégé Skid Tray

CorkSport is pleased to announce the release the new CorkSport 2001-2003 Mazda/Mazdaspeed Protégé Skid Tray.

The CorkSport Mazda/Mazdaspeed Protégé Skid Tray will provide solid protection against rocks and road debris and is designed to prevent damage to key components of the 2001-2003 Protégé undercarriage.

Made from 0.090” precision machined aluminum, the CorkSport Skid Plate will provide maximum protection while adding minimal weight to the body of the vehicle. This one-piece precision bent skid plate is angled for a tight fit and structural rigidity and offers a more complete seal to handle harsh conditions and provide smoother airflow under the front side of the car.

“There are a few companies in recent years that have jumped on the bandwagon to develop products for the Mazdaspeed 3 and other newer Mazda vehicles.” said Rich Harris President of CorkSport Performance, “CorkSport is one of the few Mazda Performance Companies that is in the business of supporting the full line-up of Mazda vehicles. We are happy to deliver this top of the line product to add to our catalog for the Protégé and continue to support our Protege customers needs.”

The CorkSport 1999-2003 Mazda/Mazdaspeed Protégé Skid Plate is is available for purchase at CorkSport.com for $249.00 and and comes with a two year warranty, full color installation instructions, all of the needed installation hardware, and knowledgeable telephone installation support.

Product Release! – CorkSport Adds Mazdaspeed 6 Rear Sway Bar to Product Line-Up

CorkSport is pleased to announce the addition of the new CorkSport Mazdaspeed 6 Rear Sway Bar to the growing list of product offerings designed to enhance and improve Mazdaspeed 6 performance.

Turning compresses the inside suspension. The CorkSport sway bar attaches both sides of the rear suspension together and resists weight transfer to the opposite side when your Mazdaspeed 6 turns. This anti-sway bar effectively increases the spring rate on the inside suspension and the effective extra spring rate helps to minimize traction robbing body roll.

The CorkSport Rear Sway Bar offers 70% more stiffness than the stock bar and will noticeably improve the cornering and traction of the vehicle without compromising ride quality. The result is an enhanced driving experience with dramatically improved cornering potential.

The CorkSport Mazdaspeed 6 Rear Sway Bar is manufactured from CNC bent 25mm 4130 steel with a black powder coated finish for exceptional strength and longevity. The install kit includes polyurethane mounting bushings to replace the stock rubber bushings and comes with a two year warranty, full color installation instructions and all of the needed installation hardware.

The CorkSport Mazdaspeed 6 Rear Sway Bar is competitively priced at $199 and is available for purchase at www.corksport.com