Remember when the first Veilside body kits came out back in the late 90s? Back in 1998 those kits were incredible! Another must have item for style was wheels made by the company Niche. They had some cleverly done up advertisements in Sport Compact Car Magazine that that caught my attention. Niche was not exactly Rays Engineering but they were very cutting edge.
Speaking of Sport Compact Car, I remember reading that magazine when Shiv and Dave were contributing editors. Project cars back then were mostly FD Rx7s and too many Hondas to count. Every once and a while a Mazda would pop up in the articles and features. Our CorkSport KL-ZE swapped Mx3 was featured in the March 2000 issue. My favorite quote, “I never thought a Barney Purple MX-3 could look so badass”.
All of these things have one thing in common; they are not with us anymore. You can still buy the original Veilside kit but with all the knockoffs I haven’t a real one in 10 years. Niche wheels have been out of the market for years. Sport Compact Car (after Shiv and Dave left) went downhill and had become just another car magazine. The owners of the magazine killed it last year.
Things change for the good and the bad. One thing that hasn’t changed is that CorkSport is still here to support Mazda enthusiasts, and we thank you guys for all your support over the years.
I have finally got some time to polish the washer behind the steering wheel on the 2010 Mazdaspeed 3, and I can, without a doubt, say it is an unbelievably fun car. I come from a world of cars that have an immense amount of what I like to call ‘Soul.’ Meaning they’re rickety and loud and generally belch mass quantities of fuel out the tailpipe on tipping into the throttle after 7500rpm decel because the 45mm Weber DCOE’s are washing the cylinder walls down like a firehose. So, for me, driving a refined car is usually an exercise in complaining about how quiet it is or that it doesn’t have enough of this so-called ‘Soul.’ This means I feel out of place because I’m actually in a nice car that behaves like it should and also accelerates and handles like a monster. It’s my exercise in self-justification that my 70’s and 80’s cars have something that replaces the refinement that I am so dearly missing.
During the product validation phase for our Power Series Intake System we found that the 2010 Speed3 has a very low tolerance for improved intake designs – the window for fuel trim on the 2010 seems to be far narrower than it was with the 2007-2009 Speed3. And the car runs pig-rich at wide open throttle from the factory, and from what we can tell Mazda wants to keep it that way. Which is ridiculous – maximum best torque isn’t made at 10:1 AFR. We have managed to design a system that pushes the envelope for power and also resides at the upper end of the safe zone as it relates to ECU Long Term Fuel Trims (LTFTs). This required us to spend a lot of time behind the wheel with an OBD2 datalogger to gather data off the 2nd Gen. ECU. We’d then head back to the lab to crunch some numbers and improve our understanding of what the ECU wants to see, what factors effect that and how to manipulate them for safe running and excellent power while simultaneously avoiding the dreaded CEL/MIL light. And no, the first step of the install instructions aren’t ‘Remove Gauge Cluster and cut traces on Tachometer circuit board that lead to check engine LED.’
But wait, this technical background story is nothing compared to the best part – all those hours behind the wheel!! After countless hours of punching up and down the freeway at various levels of cruise, I switched gears and took the 2010 out on one of my favorite loops… Until this point, I hadn’t had a good opportunity to really see what the car was capable of, as most of my time in it was on commutes and around town driving.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with where we’re located, CorkSport is in Vancouver, Washington – right across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon. Vancouver is in the shadow of Mt. St. Helens, the cascade range volcano that blew 2000′ off its top in 1980. I live about halfway between Mt. St. Helens and Vancouver, and the North Clark County area has an amazing array of roads snaking over the landscape. Banked 180-degree curves abound, and just when you’re ready to pull over and lean your head out to paint the tarmac with your lunch, the road opens up to 1-2 mile straights that give your inner ear the slightest respite prior to wrapping right back into beautiful Nurburgring-esque sweepers among gorgeous green foliage and narrow cliff-lined lakes.
The Speed3 performed phenomenally. There were plenty of areas for improvement, what with it having stock suspension, no strut braces, factory tires, etc. For the most part, however, it was a blast to drive. The factory brakes are surprisingly capable and the transmission gearing is perfectly matched for putting lots of power down through the curves and even more as the straights open up. The engine management provides a very crisp deceleration with its overrun (deceleration) fuel cut algorithm. There were a number of times when I had to remind myself that I was simply going way too fast and back off in areas where sight distance was limited, but the car is so smooth to accelerate through 2nd, 3rd, and 4th that it’s hard to realize you’re doing 90-100mph.
Coming from a predominantly rear-wheel and all-wheel drive background, the Speed takes some getting used to when hammering it around corners, laying down 300lb-ft of torque. In sharp turns under acceleration, the massive torque-steer requires some elbow grease to reorient the treads to follow the road, but the benefit gained on big sweepers is well worth the tradeoff provided in the FWD drivetrain configuration. This is a wonderful car, and if you can get past the torque steer and not be bothered by it (which takes very little time from what I’ve found), the benefits had from the power that causes it far outweigh the initial surprise of how heavy-handed the car can be under certain conditions. But for me, the torque steer is an excellent addition – I think I have slowly identified that what I see to be the feeling of ‘Soul’ in a car is really just elements of a visceral experience – and the torque steer is the only unrefined and live thing about the car that reminds you that you’re not driving your girlfriend’s Jetta. As automotive enthusiasts, we long for these elements in our cars, which is why we love to modify them – a throaty exhaust system and an intake / turbo inlet that allows you to hear the turbo spool up both go a long way to bringing your Mazda’s Soul out of its cage and to the surface.
There was a recent “spy shot” of the new Ford Ranger truck seen driving around. The good news it is a Ford Ranger in name alone. The new Ranger chassis will be based on the Mazda BT-50 truck which is sold everywhere on the planet except North America.
Photo Courtesy of Mazda Australia
They are listing the new Mazda Ranger to be available in 2011 with a 1.6 DI gas engine. If Ford has some sense and sells the 3.0 16 valve 4 cylinder Turbodiesel with the 150 hp and 280 torque which is found overseas currently, they already have 1 buyer. With the Mazda chassis we will get double wishbone front suspension with torsion bars instead of the twin I-beam carry over from the 1960s. Ford had been using this suspension in light duty trucks in the last 30 years of Rangers.
If the engine and power train controls carry over from the BT-50 diesels there are plug in tuners available as well. Plug it in, turn up the boost and pick up an extra 50 torque!
You can tell I really want a new Mazda truck can’t you?
Who knows, CorkSport may even offer performance parts for the trucks.
I just got the 2010 Mazdaspeed3 off the dyno after doing some installs and have some results to share.
The Dyno run went great for the 2010 MS3. It’s bone stock with three mods – CorkSport Power Series Racepipe (80mm with factory 65mm outlet) and CS Power Series Intake w/ Turbo Inlet and a set of CorkSport Motor Mount Inserts. Each of these products will be released shortly for the 2010 MS3 including some revised design considerations for the new 2010.
The stock baseline numbers for the 2010 were 231hp 269tq (73.8F/45%Humidity). With the two mods, it hammered down 272hp and 301tq (78.7F/43%Humidity).
41hp gain, 32ft lb of torque. Boost went from factory 16.4psi to 18.6! Can’t wait to see what it picks up with the downpipe.
If you have a Mazdaspeed3 without any exhaust modifications or haven’t added an intake or a turbo inlet pipe, hit me up…there’s power on the table right in front of you.
CorkSport is proud to announce that we are expanding our Cold Air Induction Box product line to include an Air Box for the COBB SF Intake system as well as our current development of cold air boxes for the 2010-2013 Mazdaspeed3 and 2010 Mazda3.
In our testing of this product we wanted to define:
Where do the cold and hot air fronts exist in the engine compartment, and what differential can be expected between these areas?
High and low-pressure areas exist, which direct requirements for sealing off areas to ensure the coldest air temperatures are entered into the filter.
To achieve these results, we determined that extensive pressure drop testing under dynamic conditions was not possible while delivering a box that retails under $100. A well-planned design of experiment which measured temperatures in the engine compartment, airbox, and surrounding areas would give us not only the hard numbers we needed to show results but also some intuition as to where the various pressure zones exist and how that affects the movement of hot and cold air in the vicinity of the filter. What we found is that the various pressure zones in the engine compartment can create barriers preventing the intake from drawing hot air.
Our testing utilized a MSD DashHawk OBD2 Datalogging system and an Innovate TC-4 Four Channel Thermocouple Logger to measure Inlet Air Temperatures, Boost Air Temperatures, Ambient Air Temperature and two channels of thermocouple inside the box and directly outside the box in the hot engine compartment. The ambient air temperature on this day was about 64F. Earlier in the day we tested the short ram intake without our box and found intake air temps were 2-8 degrees lower than the engine compartment temperature.
Testing these variables on our cold air box design, we saw a huge benefit – over 30 degree difference between the engine compartment and the interior of the box. By the time of this testing, the engine compartment had a chance to heat soak, and the hot air in the engine compartment was 10-15 degrees higher. Despite this increase in temperature, our average temperature differential was now in the 25-28 degree range, and inlet air temperatures were down 8-12 degrees dependent on the volume of airflow past the sensor – obviously, in traffic, you’re going to get some level of heat soak in the inlet system, MAF Housing, etc. – but that cools off quickly when 64-degree ambient air temperatures blast past at the rate of an office cubicle of volume per minute.
Some may ask, why is your box not enclosed or better sealed within the engine compartment? In the course of our testing seal-off surfaces, we found areas – such as the gap under the box – that are either a source of cool air or have a pressure effect that prevents hot air from entering them. Some of these, such as the seams on the box, were beneficial to seal off, some provide relatively cool air, but others were completely inconclusive. The bottom line is that there are a number of areas that may appear to allow hot air into the box, but testing proved otherwise.
The end result is a series of boxes that use an overhanging lid with a seal strip along the mating surface, a silicone seal at the filter port, and contoured front edges that align with the headlight assembly. These systems promote filter temperatures roughly equivalent to ambient air temperature, and 8-12 degree inlet air temperature drops compared to similar intake systems without the box. Note: As we did not test at all possible outside air temperatures, extremely hot or extreminely cold ambient temperatures may show some variation from these results, but the effects should be minimal.
If you have any questions, suggestions for further tests about the CorkSport Power Series Intake System or CorkSport Cold Air Induction Systems, feel free to post comments to this blog so we may update the details and content.
