Introducing the CorkSport Lower Tie Bar for the AWD 2019+ Mazda 3 & AWD CX-30! Improve your cornering characteristics and steering feel by stiffening the front subframe of your vehicle.
For example, anytime chassis bracing is added, the stiffened subframe/chassis allows the suspension and tires to do their job better, giving you the performance and feel you want on a twisty backroad. We are proud to bring one of our favorite simple Mazdaspeed 3 mods to the 4th GEN Mazda 3 and CX-30 communities!
Improved Handling
While cornering or under heavy acceleration, all the forces that come from your tires must be counteracted by the suspension and chassis of your vehicle. With lateral cornering loads, a lot of these tire forces are transmitted into your subframe. ( See Image Below) The red arrows show the forces as they act through the control arms and into your subframe.
How It Works
Since the 4th GEN subframe is essentially a large square, these forces can flex the subframe, pushing in the sides and/or turning the square into more of a parallelogram. This flex will dull your handling feel and slow the vehicle’s response to steering inputs. The CS lower tie bar connects the lower control arm mounting points, stiffening the subframe and allowing the CS bar to help counteract any forces that were flexing the subframe previously!
Drivers Report It Handles Better
Okay enough theory, what does this mean for your car? We tested opinions of the car with and without the tie bar, and our drivers reported good improvements! Specifically, better steering feel, reduced bump steer, and more responsive turn-in. The upgrade is perfect for driving on the street, track, or autocross! There is a minor enhancement to the brake pedal feel when under hard braking. Like on the MS3 lower tie bar, the CS GEN4 lower tie bar will even help to control wheel hop and torque steer during those hard launches.
Shape of the Lower Tie Bar
While the shape appears a bit unconventional for chassis bracing, it is for a simple and good reason: so the bar will actually fit! The clearances around the engine, transmission, and transfer case are pretty tight on the GEN4, so the bendy shape had to be used. Rest assured, it fits without issue and installs in just about 30 minutes! This design did present an issue: a bent bar will be less robust than a straight bar. Don’t worry; we used FEA software to simulate a high-load corner and found that our design is more than strong enough to take all of the forces directly without issue. This is a worst-case-scenario as in reality, these cornering forces are distributed among the suspension components, subframe, and rest of the chassis, but we felt it necessary to prove that the CorkSport lower tie bar can handle whatever abuse you can throw at it!
Testing the Tie Bar
Like our Mazdaspeed 3 tie bar, the 2019+ MZ3 bar is made from 1-inch diameter, 0.120-inch wall steel tubing with 0.190-inch thick mounting brackets on the ends. The material and same design philosophy have proven to take every bit of abuse on 600, 700, and 800 horsepower MS3s so you can be confident in its reliability on your GEN4! Each bar is finished off with a satin black powder coat and a small CS decal for a great-looking bar that will stay looking great for a long time.
While not required, the CS Lower Tie Bar works even better when paired with our other chassis braces, like the CS Strut Tower Bar, Sway Bar, and Mazda 3 Rear Hatch Brace. Check out our listing linked below for more info, and be sure to give us a call with any questions!
CorkSport is happy to announce touring car availability for those people/teams who want a fun-to-drive and great-looking race/track-focused Mazda 3! The goal of the build was to make a competitive and reliable TC race car and get Mazda back into multi-make competition, which goes back to the Speed Vision and World Challenge days of the early 2000s.
For the 2024 season CorkSport has been validating the design work and lessons learned racing the CorkSport Mazda 3 TC in the SRO TC America TC class. We had multiple podium finishes and ran at the front proving the competitiveness of the Mazda platform against the Hyundai, Honda, and Mini TC class cars.
The base of the build is the Mazda 2.5 Skyactiv engine with a CorkSport bespoke turbo kit developing well over 300 wheel hp in TC trim. The TC car engine management is handled by a Motec M1 ECU, in conjunction with a Bosch Motorsports LC2 wideband controller, and a Motec C125 dash/logger.
The 6 speed Mazda gearbox is equipped with a clutch type LSD and upgraded 3-4 gears with a transmission cooler, while the clutch is an off the shelf X-Clutch single disc clutch/flywheel combo.
Penske shocks/Swift springs, CorkSport upper mounts, and upgraded suspension pick-up points handle road racing while allowing for accurate suspension settings.
Braking is handled by a 364x32mm 6 piston CorkSport race brake kit which uses floating front rotors paired with upgraded rear pads and brakelines on OEM calipers. The brakes are covered with 18×10 Enkei lightweight RPF1 wheels.
To top off the build is the widebody kit which includes, front bumper, splitter, front and rear fenders, side skirts, rear bumper and TCr spec rear wing.
SRO Circuit of the Americas 2024
There is limited availability for the start of the 2025 race season. Currently 2 cars are left for delivery early 2025 for the 2025 TC America race season.
Getting accurate readings for your Mazda Skyactiv 2.5L turbo is nearly impossible. Now your boost & vacuum signal for your 4th generation 2021+ Mazda 3 turbo just got so much easier with the CorkSport Boost Reference Adapter. Designed for all Skyactiv 2.5L Turbo models, adding a boost gauge could not be easier!
Mazda, We Have A Problem
While we are all grateful that Mazda finally put a turbo in the 4th GEN Mazda 3, they did not see fit to include a boost gauge of any type for the driver. Adding a boost gauge to your Mazda 3 Turbo (or other Mazda models with the 2.5L turbo engine) is now easy with the CorkSport Boost Reference Adapter & CorkSport Boost Gauge!
The Challenge
The challenge with Mazda’s design is that they didn’t provide a port to get boost and vacuum signal from your Skyactiv Turbocharged engine. Why?! It’s a mystery to us. Since data is crucial to improving performance, we wanted a solution to get this information. It quickly became apparent to our engineers that we needed a bolt-on solution that provides the world with the missing link!
A Bolt On Solution
The CorkSport Boost Reference Block provides a very simple way to source boost and vacuum from the intake manifold post intercooler. This gives you the best possible boost signal right as the airflow enters the engine.
The installation is easy. The bolt-on design allows you to simply attach your boost gauge hose to the barb fitting once the adapter block is installed! Boom! Now that the problem has also been solved, let’s build a better Mazda 3 Turbo!
2024 looks to be freaking fantastic for the Mazda 3 Turbo performance enthusiast, and here’s why. CorkSport has been diligently developing a Drop-in Performance Turbo Upgrade for the SkyActiv-G 2.5L Turbo engine alongside the dozens of Mazda 3 performance parts we have released to the community.
With recent rumblings of a reworked OEM turbo option circulating through social media, we thought it was time to officially share the R&D we have been quietly working on.
As you can see, we have a 100% complete and new design in the 3D CAD model above. We are developing a performance turbo upgrade from scratch with larger and performance-optimized housings, CHRA, and wheels, all designed to work together.
Choosing this design path takes a lot more time, effort, and money to create a finished product. Despite the increased resource requirements, this is what it takes to develop an efficient and reliable performance drop-in turbo for the Mazda community. Now, let’s apply some context to that statement.
Back in 2018, we wrote a couple of blogs dissecting the OEM turbo found on the Mazda 6 2.5T. At that time the Mazda 3 did not have a turbo option yet.
We inspected the housings, wheels, CHRA, and Mazda’s “Dynamic Pressure” system. We quickly realized that the OEM turbo would be a HUGE limitation on the Mazda Turbo engine’s performance – even once tuning was fully available. Fast forward to the announcement of the Mazda 3 Turbo option, and we got to work on an improved turbo design.
Hybrid Compressor Wheel (left) 50.4mm Inducer & 63.3mm Exducer with extended tip vs OEM ~43mm Inducer & ~56mm Exducer
One of the first steps we took was building a “hybrid” OEM turbo to see how that would perform vs the OEM turbo. A hybrid turbo means an OEM turbo that has been modified to use larger than OEM wheels. Above you can see the larger compressor and turbine wheels next to the OEM wheels.
Our testing showed some potential with a “hybrid” setup turbo, but there were still limitations to the power potential. We saw a bit slower spool and a bit more mid-range power potential, but top-end power was still struggling to hold. Granted this was very early in the tuning developments for the platform.
A major concern we had was around the hybrid turbo, was the reliability and further cracking of the OEM housing once it was modified for the larger wheels. The OEM turbine housing is very small, specifically the turbine scroll which is the most critical part of the turbine housing. The OEM housing just didn’t have a lot of extra material to work with (remove) to safely accommodate a larger turbine wheel.
Check out this image of the turbine housing after it was machined to accept the larger turbine wheel. The thin edge marked by the blue arrows is very thin due to removing so much material. This area of the turbine funnels the exhaust gases into the turbine wheel inducer and directly affects the efficiency of the wheel. Had we machined any more material for a larger wheel, we would have started to affect how the exhaust gases enter the turbine wheel.
In the image above, the inlet divider inside the turbine housing is cracking. In the image below, an internal portion of the scroll is cracking as seen through the wastegate port.
We’ve already seen OEM housings cracking from normal use, so the idea of thinning the turbine housing in critical areas did not seem like the right approach for a performance turbo upgrade.
A hybrid turbo may have a place in the performance aftermarket and it may have some performance benefits (if the housing is up to the task), but if we are going to stand behind the product; we are going to develop it from the ground up to proactively eliminate reliability concerns.
So that’s exactly what we are doing!
Our Development Expertise
Leaning on our development expertise with the CST Turbo line for the Mazdaspeed platform, we are designing a new turbo from scratch for the Mazda 3 Turbo and other models that share the same engine.
Starting from the ground up gives us the ability to optimize the turbo for performance applications. Like the Mazdaspeed CST Turbo line, we can directly control the size of the housings, CHRA, wheels, wastegate, material thickness, and material type.
Designing the Mazda 3 Turbo
Now let’s dive into the design of the housings for the upcoming Mazda 3 Turbo upgrade. Starting with the compressor housing; A LOT is going on with the compressor housing design. We call this a feature-rich part and you can see why below.
The OEM compressor housing (right) has a handful of integrated features: the obvious compressor inlet and outlets, the electronic wastegate mounting, the electronic bypass valve, and the EVAP/Breather port. When designing a performance drop-in turbo, our goal is to retain all these OEM features so that installation and use are very simple and easy.
Alongside the OEM features are the changes we have made to increase performance potential which includes a slightly larger scroll A/R of 0.60. Note: This even exceeds our CST Turbos and has been proven to be responsive and support a flow of 700whp.
Here you can see the blue lines showing the larger compressor scroll. CorkSport is on the left and OEM is on the right. Increasing the size of the scroll A/R helps improve the compressor wheel efficiency and max flow capacity. Along with a larger scroll, we have also designed the housing to have either a stock-size inlet or a 3.5” anti-surge inlet for the larger turbo option.
Yup…there’s going to be more than one size available. More on that later…
To do this we have to move some things around, but don’t you worry every part of this development is verified on a car with 3D printed prototypes and then functional prototypes. This is a critical part of the development to make sure everything fits like OEM but punches like the hot hatch we all asked Mazda for.
A Larger Responsive Turbo
Now let’s check out the party side of the turbo…the turbine housing. In my personal opinion, turbines make power and compressors just support the required flow. So what are we doing on the turbine side of things to make more power?
Several changes have been applied on the turbine side to increase performance and reliability. Here are the CorkSport (left) and OEM (right) turbine housings next to each other.
Our goal is to develop a turbo that is fun, responsive, and carries power like you would expect. Referencing the blue lines you can see a drastic difference in the size of the turbine housing scroll. While the CS design is a large increase in size over OEM, it is not “bigger” than a typical aftermarket generic fitment turbo – highlighting just how tiny and limiting the OEM turbine housing really is.
Now let’s take a look inside the housing so you can understand what is changing.
An Improved Design
Both turbines (CS & OEM) are single scroll designs, but you will notice two major differences.
Firstly, the spiral section of the CS design is drastically larger than OEM; this is the true “scroll” of the housing and thus the section of the housing that funnels the exhaust gas into the turbine wheel. We changed two aspects of the scroll design:
The “swallowing capacity” of the scroll has been increased so that the peak flow capacity of the turbine is much greater than OEM. This is the cross-sectional area at the beginning of the scroll shown by the blue arrow.
The scroll A/R (Area/Radius) has been increased from 0.53 to 0.71. This ratio number affects how “quickly” the exhaust gas is forced into the turbine wheel. The smaller ratio is a faster spool but poor top-end power and a larger is slower spool but more top-end power. The goal here is to find the right balance of spool/response and top-end power.
Second, you may have noticed the CS turbo is missing the red blocky section that the OEM turbo has. It’s missing for good reason.
In the above image, you can see the OEM turbo with the turbo on the right and the dynamic pressure valve on the left. Mazda uses this control valve to help spool the turbo below 2000 RPM and it seems to do the job, but it has cracking issues from what we’ve seen and is going to be a huge flow restriction on higher power setups.
We are getting rid of it!
The Pursuit of Reliable Performance
In the pursuit of performance and reliability, the dynamic valve and its housing had to go. Like the OEM turbine housing, we’ve seen cracks forming in the dynamic valve housings so we know they are a reliability issues and Mazda knows as well.
Mazda is also getting rid of the dynamic valve system…the CX50 Turbo has a much simpler twin-scroll turbo design with no dynamic valve and I assume that change will find its way into all 2.5T models sooner, rather than later.
To keep things as simple as possible for you, the enthusiast, the CorkSport-designed turbine housing mounts directly to the cylinder head and still takes advantage of Mazda’s trick 4-3-1 exhaust port design. Along with that change, the OEM EGR port is retained and new heat shields will be part of the kit.
That covers the housings for the upcoming CorkSport Drop-In Turbo Upgrade for the Mazda 3 Turbo. We are excited about this project and even more excited to bring this to the community. Who doesn’t love boost right?
Expect to hear more as we roll further into 2024 and until then enjoy these teaser shots of the raw castings.
We are excited to announce another product for both the 4th Gen Mazda 3, 2021+ Mazda 3 Turbo, and 1st Gen Mazda CX-30! The new offering to the lineup is the CorkSport Skid Plate which utilizes our tried and true 11 gauge aluminum construction with a 2-piece design for an OEM-like installation. The CS Skid Plate is perfect for anyone who is lowered or anyone who likes to take their car out on forest roads and wants more protection over the thin factory splash guard. Keep on scrolling for more details!
OEM Splash Guard vs CorkSport Skid Plate
Starting with the OEM splash guard, there is much to be desired in terms of protection. The factory piece is made of thin plastic that is only designed to protect the bottom of your engine and transmission from things such as water, dust, and small debris. This can lead to a problem when you have lowering springs on your car or go on a camping trip.
In both of these situations, there is a greater chance of objects such as rocks and other larger debris hitting the splash guard and puncturing or even ripping off the splash guard completely, leading to potential damage to your oil pan or other critical components.
The CS Skid Plate on the other hand is all aluminum and can better protect against these threats to ensure that you can get to your destination and back intact. This provides you with peace of mind whether you like to go on rocky forest roads, up to the mountain through snow & ice, or are lowered and trying to get over speed bumps.
Improved Plate Design
To provide a factory fit, we have CAD-designed the CS Skid Plate to mount directly in place of the OEM splash shield. This means no drilling, cutting, trimming, or issues during the installation.
The Skid Plate is also a 2-piece design similar to the OEM splash shields so that installation is easier and that there is some adjustability for minor variation between vehicles and to also help reduce the shipping cost. We also implemented an air duct into the CS Skid Plate that is similar to the one on the factory AWD splash shields to help supply cool air to the front differential.
Finally, there is an oil access cover that you can move out of the way to easily change your oil and filter without removing the 2 main skid plate sections.
Quality Matters
Each CorkSport Skid Plate is made from laser cut and precision formed 11 gauge 5052 aluminum. This ensures a consistent fitment that will make installation straightforward as well as the much-needed increase in engine protection. Included with the CS Skid Plate are stainless steel button head bolts that provide great corrosion resistance and are lower profile than a traditional hex bolt to reduce the chance of them getting snagged.
If you want to increase the protection to the underbody of your Mazda, the CorkSport Aluminum Skid Tray is a great option! Head over to the product listing for the video and more images and feel free to call us with any questions!
