Ever wish your Mazda 3 came with daytime running lights? CorkSport has heard requests for a daytime running light solution many times. In response to this, we have come out with the all new CorkSport 2010-2011 Mazda 3 LED Bumper DRL Set.
Designed to enhance the light output and look of your Mazda 3, the CorkSport Daytime Running Light LED Bumper Kit has been developed to fit seamlessly into your grille opening without any permanent modifications to your bumper.
A high quality lighting upgrade, the light housing is made from durable UV resistant clear plastic and includes five LED bulbs. The light output has been made to match CorkSport’s other light kits in the 6000k color range, very white with a just a hint of blue.
As with all of our products, you can expect this kit to come with full color installation instructions, all of the needed installation hardware and of course, CorkSport customer service and support for a worry free purchase process.
The kit is available for 2010-2011 Mazda 3 models and can be purchased today at https://www.corksport.com
Product Release! CorkSport 2010-2011 Mazda 3 LED Bumper DRL Set December 17th, 2018CorkSport
With the newly designed Mazda 6 launch on the horizon, Mazda has announced more new features that they will be incorporating into their newest models. “i-Activsense” is an umbrella term Mazda is using to cover a series of new safety monitoring response system technologies designed to help the driver safely navigate the roads. Many have already been incorporated into the new CX-5.
Radar Cruise Control
Judges the traveling speed distance to vehicles ahead and modifies the speed of your vehicle to maintain a safe following distance. This means no longer fussing with your cruise control on long trips every time you come up on some traffic!
Smart City Brake Support
Already incorporated into the new CX-5’s, this is designed to help drivers avoid frontal collisions. The system uses a laser sensor to detect a vehicle or obstacle in front of the car and automatically actives the brakes and reduces engine output if the driver fails to slow the vehicle appropriately.
Forward Obstruction Warning
Monitors the gap between vehicles and the closing speed and then calculates the risk of collision occurring if the driver were to take no action. This ensures a faster response when the driver actives the brakes.
High Beam Control
Ever get so tired of turning your high-beams on and off on the highway at night that you just decide to leave them off? Well this smart high beam control system will take care of that for you! The high beam control will detect oncoming traffic and will automatically switch headlights between high and low beam, improving visibility at night and aiding hazard avoidance.
Lane Departure Warning System
When the system is switched on, a camera on the widescreen will monitor the position of the white lane markings at speed of 65MPH or higher to detect risk of an unintentional lane change and then will alert the driver with a rumble sound when moving out of their lane without indicating.
Rear Vehicle Monitoring
A smart solution to aiding a driver with their “blind spot”, the rear vehicle monitoring system will activate an indicator light in the door mirror for a driver making a lane change when a vehicle is approaching quickly behind the car and to warn the driver either if the vehicle might be invisible (in the blind spot) on the side or if a vehicle will approach within 5 seconds. The system will monitor both sides of the vehicle and indicate when intending to overtake or be overtaken.
Adaptive front lighting
The new AFS system automatically adjusts the angle of a vehicles headlight according to steering direction so when you are cornering or approaching intersections at night, the beam of the headlights illuminate the path the car is actually following.
While none of this new technology is groundbreaking, it is great that they are being incorporated into Mazdas line-up providing they have the flexibly to be turned on and off as needed. Some of them could potentially have a few drawbacks if not implemented properly, but I trust Mazda to incorporate these features in a smart and sensible way so that the driving experience is enhanced rather than hindered.
Since the release of our Oil Catch Can we have had a lot of questions about how our set-up functions. Most understand the basics of what the OCC does, but want to know more about how our OCC does it.
The Basics
For the last 20 or so years, all cars have had some sort of PCV system installed to re-burn unwanted vapors from your crankcase instead of venting them to the outside world. This system is based on a vacuum. When the engine is running, the pistons are happily moving up and down. There is a small amount of compression that is lost into the crankcase passing by the rings. This excess air will cause pressure in the crankcase to slow down the pistons from going up and down and build up oil vapors that create frothing of the oil. There are also small amounts of condensation that get trapped in the crankcase and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know water and oil don’t mix.
An oil catch can is designed to “catch” unwanted vapors that are in your crankcase and PCV system and prevent these contaminants from entering your motor. With no catch can install, you have the potential to get build-up in the intake manifold causing dirty valves and poor compression.
How the Mazdaspeed 3 PCV System Works
A Mazdaspeed 3 has two PCV lines. One goes from the cam cover to the intake and one goes from the crankcase to the intake manifold. Why the two locations you ask? Well, they go to the closest vacuum source, but in a turbo car, you will not have a vacuum when you are in boost so a check valve closes and stops the crankcase from being pressurized and boost being lost.
Improving the Design of the CorkSport OCC
Most Oil Catch Cans include a PCV valve in the set-up for turbo vehicles, as ours did until just recently. So why does CorkSport no longer have a Check Valve on our Oil Catch Can setup? This is a great question.
We noticed that by adding the PCV check valve to the oil catch can, the OCC worked less effectively because when the check valve closes (the car is under boost) the catch can is no longer able to do the same job of “catching” the vapors. When your car is under boost is the time the catch can is working the hardest to prevent those contaminants from entering your engine. Instead, it is just sitting there waiting for the PCV valve to open back up.
We decided to cap the intake manifold and pull the vacuum through the intake so both cam and crankcase vapors are trapped in the OCC leaving your motor the cleanest it can be. Now, the CorkSport Catch Can will be working to eliminate those vapors all of the time without the restriction of a PCV valve to prevent it from being able to remove contaminates while your car is under boost.
So why not cap the intake and the intake manifold and have it vent to atmosphere?
There are several reasons this is a bad idea and being friendly to mother nature is only one of them. Yes, you might sleep at night better knowing you are not hurting the environment but this is not the only reason to plumb the catch can back into the intake.
1. The intake vacuum helps draw vapors out of the motor by creating a low-pressure system to force the vapors out. Without the vacuum, the vapors can only be forced out by the pressure in the crankcase. This is unreliable and inefficient. Think of how much easier it is to get air into the motor under pressure (ie turbo). It only makes sense that the opposite would be true about getting it out and it would be much easier to achieve under vacuum.
2. Metered air passes through the MAF sensor before entering the engine, then a small amount is passed by the rings and enters back into the intake or intake manifold. If you do not route the PCV back into the intake manifold then that calculated air is “poof” let out into space causing your fuel trims to be off.
If you think you can tune around this you are correct, sort of. As the rings degrade you will have a small amount of additional air passing by the rings. Time to re-tune. The rings degrade some more, then time to re-tune again. I think you get the picture. Eventually, you forget to keep up on this and your fueling is off enough to cause a check engine light or worse. Zoom-Zoom-Boom!
This is the nature of a MAF-sensored car. There is a good reason that Mazda has everything hooked back up to the intake. Your car will be happier, in the long run, doing this.
It has been awhile since we provided an update on the shop Mazdaspeed 3. Because we are in a constant state of development for Mazdaspeed 3 parts, our shop car always has parts moving on and off it.
We recently took the speed3 back to stock in order to baseline it on our new dyno. We have been building the car back out again with bolt ons to determine what our max power is on the stock turbo. The car is efficient enough that it can only run 18psi at redline and makes slightly more power at less boost which is interesting see on the dyno. For the final tune, we are running 26psi tapering to 17psi by redline. The peak torque is up 100ft.lbs over stock and really comes on hard. Overall we have seen a 36% increase in peak power and 50% increase in peak torque.
The next thing to do is figure out where the factory injectors die off. With only bolt-ons we are at 85% duty cycle to keep the air/fuel ratio in the 11 to 1 range. Generally a good rule of thumb is to not go over 85% so I can see a huge need for aftermarket injectors or a secondary fuel system.
As for the suspension, not only does the car run our coilovers, camber arms, prototype toe arms, front and rear swaybars, front and rear endlinks, and a few other braces but also some upcoming suspension components that include motor mounts and some others we will be announcing in the coming months.
With the power up and the handling on point, we needed to address stopping. We are currently using our prototype brake pads on the Mazdaspeed 3 and our Mazda 2. We went with a compound that is made for the daily driver. They don’t have to be heated up to work very well, will last longer, and stop better than the factory pads. They also dust less which is nice if you like keeping your wheels clean.
The interior is getting a prototype shift knob that should have come from the factory. How many times have you thought that the mazdaspeed3 or mazdaspeed6 shift knob just doesn’t match the rest of the red and black interior? After running a few aftermarket knobs, my biggest complaint was that most of them are made from machined aluminum. Aluminum is not only lighter than the factory weighted knob which makes shifting harder but the first time you grab a metal shift knob on a hot summers day and your skin is on fire you will never forget it. Proper shift knobs should be wrapped and weighted which ours will be and made to compliment the interior styling of the vehicle. Other than that the interior has not much changed.
The exterior is back to having the AutoEXE front bumper and is about ½” lower than it was last year which really shows off the 19” Advan RZ wheels.
In Prototype
CorkSport Transmission Motor Mount
CorkSport Rear Motor Mount
CorkSport Rear Toe Adjusters
CorkSport Aluminum Coolant Expansion Tank
CorkSport Front/Rear Brake Pads
Brydon-
Project Mazdaspeed 3 Update! October 19th, 2012CorkSport
I know many of you have been anticipating the arrival of a new CorkSport t-shirt to add to your collection. Well wait no longer! CorkSport is happy to introduce our newest CS shirt, the CorkSport “Established in 1998” shirt! Designed by our customer Ethan (thank you Ethan!), the shirt features a CS founders logo on the front and CorkSport across the back.
Of course this isn’t the only CorkSport brand item we carry in our merchandise catalog. As many of you know, we have a couple other limited run shirts and our popular CS hats that we released at the request of our customers several months ago.
Today, we have added a limited edition white and pink hat for the Mazda enthusiast ladies out there that want to show their CS spirit! Of course, no judgement here, this hat is available to anyone who likes white and pink and ladies, we have many other color hats that may interest you as well!
These are just a few of the CorkSport brand items that we currently have available in our catalog and from time-to-time we do limited runs of other highly requested items.
Requests come in by email, are posted on Facebook or Twitter, or mentioned to me at an event for hoodies, lanyards, garage banners and more. Have an idea of what you want to see added to the mix? Let us know by commenting on this post!
