Here’s the story, CorkSport is looking for Mazda dealers willing to sell our products directly to you. We have several already who are great, and are more than willing to sell our products.
For example, we have a dealer in Canada that regularly sell our products and has them on display in their showroom:
Chambly Mazda In Chambly, QC does a great job representing CorkSport brand parts. We encourage you to check them out if you are near them.
If you know of any dealers that are kind to customers with aftermarket parts, we would like to hear from you. What’s in it for you? Well, you can take a first hand look at our parts before you buy them and then get the dealer to install them! Plus, if they have the parts in stock, you get it the same day.
So if you know of a ‘mod’ friendly dealer near you, let us know and we will do our best to get them to carry CorkSport brand parts!
In May 2009 Derek Jenkins joined Mazda after a 15 year career with VW. Derek worked his way through Volkswagen and his last post was Chief of Design for Volkswagen Group North America. He is credited for the Audi A2, A8, and the VW IROC which is going to be the upcoming Scirocco. So why should we care who he is and what he has done? He is now the Design Director for Mazda Design America which means Derek is now in charge of implementing the Nagare design to upcoming Mazda models with Mazda’s new global design chief, Ikuo Maeda.
VW IROC Concept aka Scirocco
With this role he will be directly communicating to the top of Mazda’s research & development, engineering, and product planning. You can expect to see his work in the next few years with new models of Mazdas being released.
The first vehicle to come out with the Nagare design is the 2011 Mazda 5 which is being shown at the Geneva Auto Show. We have more details on the Mazda 5 in the blog post I wrote up in January.
2011 Mazda 5
Models coming up for re-design or replacement includes the RX-8, Tribute, and CX-9. I am holding out hope the RX-8 gets replaced with an RX-7 successor. The new tribute or replacement for it should be a huge departure from the existing model. The CX-9 I am not sure how it will turn out. It should be getting a facelift soon but it could a surprise how much the Nagare styling influences it.
If you are worried that Derek is not an enthusiast I found an interesting mention of him on Zercustoms showing his modded Golf GTI. Let us hope this gives more leverage to a future RX-7.
Every day our customers are sharing our products with other enthusiasts, whether it’s through forum posts, YouTube videos or the results of their own evaluation of our products. We’ve seen customer videos and posts about every facet of our products all the way from unboxing and evaluation of our packaging and presentation of the parts and installation instructions. And we love it.
We love it so much that we’re working on coming up with a way to reward our customers for sharing our products and generating content for our website. Starting immediately, we will hold a contest for customer generated content that will result in two awards of 25% off on the CorkSport product of your choice (not to exceed $100). One of these will be for video content, the other for a product validation case study. The winners will be announced in July and if we get good response, we’ll repeat the contest.
Video content could be a start to finish installation video for one of our products, racing footage, or just a well produced video demoing one or more of our products. Videos should be uploaded to YouTube and tagged with CorkSport Credit For Content as well as the full product name (if multiple in the video, pick the most topical).
Here’s a great example: Jeff Ciesielski, one of our local MazdasNW.com members up in the Seattle area is running a sweet little homebrewed Turbo ’92 Miata 1.6l, replete with a 50 Trim T3 .42/.48 Turbocharger, BEGi Manifold, 2.5 Straight Pipe Exhaust, 28x7x2.5 Front Mount Intercooler, 450cc Injectors and Megasquirt 1v3.0 w/ HR10g Firmware controlling the spark and fuel. The best part about his car though is the bone stock radiator with fans wired in parallel. He was running into all sorts of cooling issues, constantly kicking the auxiliary fan circuit on after a full boost run when he decided to give our FRP radiator cooling panel a shot. This inexpensive part has the distinct added advantage of cleaning up the engine bay aesthetic, what could it hurt?
Now, our customers have had great comments in the past on the functionality of these products, but Jeff’s configured with the full datalogging MS1 ECU, and decided to do some before/after comparisons evaluating the coolant temps and intake air temps of his system and here’s what he found:
“I’m attaching two datalogs from the miata which are tagged by date.
The first one shows the car in a very similar setup(in terms of layout) but running less boost. They were taken in similar ambient temps ( 60 on the first, and 55 on the second) and when it was a bit damp out. My CLTs dropped by around 10 degrees, and whereas my IAT’s used to be around 10 degrees above ambient, they now only get around 5 over ambient.”
About a month later I pinged Jeff back to find out if he had found repeatability in the results, and it sounds like a good 10 degree coolant temperature variance can be seen with the radiator panel:
“I still haven’t managed to get it over 197 even when beating on the car, and much like the earlier log I sent you, it tends to stabilize around 189 when driving, as opposed to the 194-200 it used to be at.”
It’s great to hear you’re having good results Jeff.
We love to hear some of the ideas our customers have when it comes to product development. You have some great ideas that have been shared with us in the last few months.
In keeping with our goal of providing excellent customer service and technical support to our customers, we would love to hear some of the tips and tricks that you use when doing installations, modifications or routine maintenance of your Mazda. Could be great ways to keep the oil from spilling all over the rotor housings on your RX-7 during an oil change (that upside down filter is a gem, isn’t it!), solutions to removing or reinstalling the downpipe on the MS3 (those studs don’t like to stay put in the turbo, do they!), or even something as simple as methods on how to keep your tools organized or functioning to their fullest.
In return, we’ll give a 10% discount code (not to exceed $25) for use toward any CorkSport Brand Parts to the top three tips submitted in the next three months.
Feel free to submit video, photos or diagrams to support your ideas.* The clearer you make the content, the better your chances are of getting the discount. We’ll publish the best tips here in our blog and give credit to everyone who submitted ideas. Submit your content to: wrenchtips@corksport.com.
For Example:
Here’s an tip I learned from an Aircraft & Powerplant mechanic who spent countless hours slogging through the muck repairing Aircrane Helicopters that had broken down in the field (or more appropriately out in the middle of nowhere in the woods). This trick was so helpful that he kept a can of Bon Ami sink cleaner in his toolbox. Aircraft and automobile engineers love to use phillips drive screws to hold all sorts of things together. And whether we ourselves have ham-fisted an install and thrashed the phillips drive in the top of a screw or it was the fault of the DPO (Dip-$&*%Previous Owner) , the solution is often times to get out the dremel and make it worse before it gets any better.
Alas, there is a solution that works perfectly, especially in those applications where the Phillips drive is HUGE and holds something on with substantial amounts of torque and your ‘bash it with a hammer’ impact screwdriver has eaten the top of the screw for breakfast.
So before you put all your weight into your battery powered screwdriver and turn what still looks remotely like a usable screw into a finely machined cone…take a deep breath. Go into the kitchen or (if you’re a bachelor and don’t know what this room in your house is for other than storing giant garbage bags of empty natty light cans) grocery store and pick up a can of abrasive sink cleaner like Bon Ami or another abrasive polishing powder. Mix it up into a paste and dip the end of your screwdriver into it. The paste is aggressive and will grab uneven surfaces of the drive in the screw and it will come right out. Make sure to continue to use plenty of downward pressure as well so the driver doesn’t just jump out of the contour of the screw. This trick also works well on partially rounded off hex drive fasteners like those M8 head exhaust manifold heat shield bolts on the MS3/MS6/CX-7.
Just don’t let your wife know that you’ve been stealing things out of the kitchen for use in the shop.
It really doesn’t feel like 20 years since the Miata was introduced by Mazda back in 1989. I remember the first time I saw one of them. I was on a family vacation to Canada riding bicycles on Vancouver Island in British Columbia and I saw one in a parking lot. It made me stop and go “Wow, that’s a Mazda?” I was still in high school at the time and my only experiences with Mazda were older RX-7s and getting rides to school on snowy days in a 323GTX.
Now, 20 years have past and Mazda is offering a special anniversary edition of the MX-5 (called a Roadster) in Japan. The car is going to be offered with either a power retractable hardtop or a soft top, in special all white paint. The car is equipped with Bilsteins shocks, “20th Anniversary” badges, and heated red Recaro seats with suede inserts, which can be seen below. Some of the optional equipment available are the Bose Audiopilot system and multi-spoke BBS wheels.
My only hope is that North America gets the special edition MX-5 as well. Look at the following the 10th anniversary RX-7 received back in 1988, they are still one of the RX-7s to own for the 86-91 models if you are a die hard collector. If the 20th anniversary model MX-5 makes it here I am sure it will sell out.
