Category: Mazda3

Since 2004 the Mazda 3 has been the go to compact car and we have been making performance parts for it since the release. The most powerful version is the Mazdaspeed 3 which was available from 2007-2013.

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An Intake for Every Engine

It has become evident to us that a number of our customers want more ability to configure the color schemes and finish options on their intakes to match the look of their car or their personality.

Because of this, we have investigated the feasibility of making all of our intakes fully color and finish configurable and are planning a staged product rollout to facilitate this. A product rollout complete with actual hard dates that you can rely on.

Stage I: Black Silicone & Filter and Full Configurability.
December 14, 2009

So starting…well…now, we have begun this transition with the rollout of black silicone couplers and charcoal-colored dry flow air filters on our Mazda3, Mazdaspeed3, Mazdaspeed6, Mazda 6, CX-7, CX-30, and CX-50 intakes. This brings us to three silicone colors (red, blue, black) for the Turbocharged MZR 2.3 DISI engines and two silicone colors (blue, black) on the MZR 2.0 and 2.5 Naturally Aspirated engines for the 2010+ model year.

Another option included in the first stage release of our fully configurable intake system is full configurability of your intake on our website. If you want black silicone, black MAF Housing and blue filter, you can choose that. If you want a red filter and a blue silicone, go right ahead. We’ll build it on the fly. We have gone through a number of lean manufacturing steps that will allow us to be agile and build our kit contents on the fly and retain our same day shipping capability for all stocked color capabilities.

Stage II: Color Anodized MAF Housings.
February 10, 2010

In this stage we will be offering three additional MAF Housing colors (most likely Blue, Red, Gold) and two powder coat colors of turbo inlet pipe, which will be determined by your requests and polls on a number of popular Mazda enthusiast forums. Due to smaller batch quantities on the anodizing and additional process steps, we’ll be offering these colors at a small premium.

Again, we will still allow you full reconfigurability to an extremely granular level -if you want a Blue Filter, Gold MAF, Black Silicone and Black Powdercoated Turbo Inlet Pipe, we’ll do it. Seriously, if you want a Red Filter, Gold MAF, Blue Silicone and Black Turbo Inlet Pipe, we’ll do that too. And just like we have provided now, photos of these combinations will pop up as you configure them on our website.

Stage III: Full Custom Anodizing / Powder Coating and more.
March 15, 2010

First off we’ll be offering powder-coated turbo inlet pipes starting with a gloss black and working into a number of other color coating options.

Additionally, this stage will allow you to fully customize anodize your MAF Housing in as many colors as we have access to. If you want a full blacked out intake with an emerald green, dark purple or titanium bronze anodized MAF Housing, we’ll get it for you (again at a reasonable premium depending on interest and volume). We’ll do our best to do small runs and keep what we can on the shelves based on polls and interest. Have a specific powder coating color? We can make it happen. We may also start anodizing inlet pipes (we’ll be switching 4043 to 5356 TIG filler rod for perfect anodizing results if we go that route).

Here’s an example of some of the anodizing colors we’ll have available:

We will also be evaluating silicone colors at this point -because we know some of you are dying for that Kawasaki Green Silicone with Purple MAF Housing to go along with your Bosozoku exhaust, zero offset wheels and stretched tires. Or maybe you just want a clean, all white intake to go along with your CWP Mazdaspeed 3. Honestly, we’ll have to hear from you on which direction to go, but I’m guessing white will be in demand.

There’s more…but if we told you, we’d have to kill you. We’re still aiming to keep this under wraps to some extent as we’ve got some really unique options on the table that we’re still getting samples of. As soon as our samples are in, we’ll be polling for interest and standard style options.

We’re doing as much as we can to provide the exact products you want, configured to your style and taste. To do so, we’re having to stretch our manufacturing agility and call on all of our resources through local machine shops and manufacturers to keep small batch parts on the shelves in a wide variety of options.

Again, tell us what YOU want to see on your car. Have a wild combination that you absolutely MUST HAVE for your car and willing to wait for it? We’ll be putting together a handful of case studies showing some of the more creative combinations for the roll out of the future options on these products.

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CorkSport September 2009 Swap Meet and Dyno Day

We had our swap meet and dyno day on Saturday the 19th. The weather for the day was pretty ominous with rain forecasted from early morning to around noon and it was right on. At 6am the rain started up but that didn’t stop us from getting the event going.


10am with the rain coming down


Alan Webb Mazda showed up at the event early and brought along some parts to sell at a discount and a new 2010 Mazdaspeed 3 to show off. We had the swap meet spaces in doors to keep people dry during the entire day. There were lots of good deals to be had at the event that we offered and other people brought as well.


People checking out the deals (including the sweet RE-Amemiya MS3 hood)


We had almost the entire Mazda range of models represented at the event. All models of Rx7s, Rx8s, Mazda Proteges (new and older models), Miatas, Mazda 6s, and Mazda 3s.


Scott’s FC with the drift damage can be seen at the right (Scott too)


The dyno event had 20 cars on run on it during the day. The best power made was a NB Miata with a GT3076R turbocharger at 400 wheel hp. The car is very un-assuming until the driver hits the throttle.


The biggest dyno number of the day went to the red Miata above.


The day even had a few surprises in it too. The 1st gen Rx7 after its dyno run drove around the parking lot and the tie rod end broke. After a quick assessment and help from CorkSport the tie rod end was repaired and the car was back on 4 wheels. Thankfully it happened in our parking lot and not on his drive home.


Oh Snap!


Thank you to everyone for coming out and making the event despite the not so pleasant weather early in the day. I would like to mention a special thanks to Alan Webb Mazda for braving the weather and to MazdasNW group for driving down from the Seattle area.

– Derrick

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Cold Air Induction Box

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 Mazdaspeed3 and 2010 Mazda3.

In our testing of this product we wanted to define:

  • Where the cold and hot air fronts exist in the engine compartment and what differential can be expected between these areas.
  • Where high and low pressure areas exist which direct requirements for sealing off areas to ensure the coldest air temperatures 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 effects 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 time of this testing, the engine compartment had a chance to heat soak and the hot air in the engine compartment 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 volume of airflow past the sensor – obviously in traffic you’re going to get some level of heatsoak 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 – are either a source of cool air or have a pressure effect that prevents hot air from entering into 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. Bottom line, there are a number of areas which may appear to allow hot air into the box, but testing proved otherwise.

The end result is a series of boxes which use a overhanging lid with seal strip along the mating surface, silicone seal at the filter port and contoured front edges which align with the headlight assembly. These systems promote filter temperatures roughly equivalent to ambient air temperature and 8-12 degree inlet air temperatures drops compared to similar intake systems without the box. Note: As we did not test at all possible outside air temperatures, extremely hot or extremely cold ambient temperatures may show some variation from these results, but the effects should be minimal.

If you have any questions or suggestions of further tests or concerns you may have with 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.

– Jason

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Update: 2010-2013 Mazda 3 Performance Parts

I know this is a bit redundant, but we’re just so excited about these new parts that we thought we’d give you an update on how things are moving along with the new 2010 Mazda 3 parts.

You remember from last blog that I got my hands on a 2010 Mazda 3. It was a 2.0L automatic, but because we had ordered a dual-exhaust rear bumper I was still able to make both a single and dual exhaust for it. You’ll also see a picture of the new SRI (Short-Ram Intake) for the 2010 Mazda 3.

First up here’s some pictures of the single-exit exhaust:

Here’s a couple shots of the dual exhaust:

Finally, here is the new SRI:

That’s all for this time, keep checking back for more updates!

– Jason