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Credit for Content: Video & Product Validation

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 offer radiator panels for the NA Miata, Protege, FC RX-7, and Mazda 3.

We look forward to hearing from our customers.

– Jason

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Visit the New CorkSport!

In the last few months we’ve done a lot of work here at CorkSport. After discontinuing our maintenance service department in June, we rearranged our shop to focus on R&D, Peformance Installations & Fabrication. We also updated our shipping department and warehouse space to streamline the packaging and shipping process. And finally, we built out some additional office space to accommodate future additions to our workforce.

In the process, we updated the layout of our showroom (including knocking out a door into our new offices). We’re proud of our products as well as the new showroom. Take a look:

Walk In Discount!

To celebrate our new showroom, we’ll be offering a 5% discount on all CorkSport products that are ordered and picked up at our location here in Vancouver, WA. As many of our products are configurable, we generally package to ship -so the only stipulation of this discount is that configurable products should be called-in in advance to allow us to build them out (30 minutes or so is all we need). Call us at 360-260-2675 to queue up your order. Offer ends April 15th!

We look forward to meeting with you and seeing your cars. Remember to tell us about your product ideas and the parts you’re looking for that aren’t on the market yet when you visit.

– Jason

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International Shipping Advice

In a typical week I’ll answer 5-6 emails asking about shipping parts outside of the United States and which method to choose. To hopefully clear up a few things for people I will discuss the options we offer and other important topics.

First things first, CorkSport will not under value shipments or label them as gifts. What you are asking us to do is to not be honest in declaring a shipments value to your government. This is like asking a US citizen to report something false to our IRS. It is something you just don’t do. The other catch on this subject is the USPS and UPS will not allow us to insure a shipment over the value of the declared parts. If you ordered a $500 part and asked us to declare it at $200 the maximum we could insure it would be $200. If the shipment gets lost or damaged there is no recourse with the carrier.

CorkSport has several options available for shipping overseas which boils down to two different carriers, the United States Postal Service aka USPS and United Parcel Service known as UPS. Each carrier has its own advantages compared to the other as I will explain below.

UPS delivers to most countries on the planet with the three options below.

UPS Express

is a 1-2 day shipment to most places on the planet. The only thing that can slow down the delivery for this option is customs in the country the shipment is going to. The brokerage fees when shipping by this method are included in the shipping cost. The duties and taxes for your country are not and UPS will collect them. Tracking is available and is updated often with UPS.

UPS Expedited

is a 3-5 day service. This is the economy service for air shipping via UPS. As with UPS Express, the brokerage fees are included in the shipping cost. The duties and taxes for your country are not and UPS will collect them. If you need something decently fast but it is not critical I recommend this option for most shipments. If you want to order something large like an exhaust system or larger, this is the shipment method we quote out. Tracking is available and is updated often with UPS.

UPS Standard

is a ground shipping option for Canada only. UPS Standard shipping takes from 3-10 days depending on where you are in Canada. CorkSport is located on the west coast in the USA. If you live on Prince Edward Island you can plan on the shipment taking 10 days to reach you. With UPS Standard the brokerage fees are NOT included in the shipping cost. The duties and taxes for your country are not as well and UPS will collect them. We get a phone call a week asking us why we did not change the shipping option from UPS Standard when someone places an order when UPS delivers a shipment and collects brokerage and duties. You the customer get to choose the shipping option. If you choose UPS for delivery we will ship it out via UPS.

USPS delivers everywhere on the planet and has multiple choices for shipping.

USPS Priority Mail International

is an option that takes 8-10 days to arrive to most countries. This does not include the time in customs once it arrives to the destination country. Sometimes customs can be quick with a 1-2 day delay. The worst case in customs I have seen was 10 days for Germany. This shipping option will require you to pay for duties and taxes for your country upon delivery. There is no brokerage fees charged. Tracking is available for Priority Mail services except for small flat rate envelope or box. Small flat rate will give us a customs form number but it is not traceable in the USPS system. Insurance is limited for Priority Mail in most countries to $600. If you have a shipment that is valued over $600 we will contact you about this to change shipping options. One drawback to Priority Mail is the maximum size limit which is 200 total centimeters length and girth.

USPS Express Mail Service

is a 5-6 day shipping option to most countries. Customs in your country can delay the shipment but we normally do not see this more than 1-2 days for Express Mail. When the Express Mail shipment arrives they will collect duties and taxes but there are no brokerage fees. Insurance levels are higher with Express Mail. For most countries the highest value for insurance is $2700. There are size limits with Express Mail which are similar to Priority Mail which limits the length and girth at 200 centimeters.

What I suggest for most shipments if the value is lower and the weight is less than 10 lbs, is to use USPS Priority Mail. It offers a decent shipping price for an international order and is very reliable. If you want to get an exhaust or intercooler kit shipped I recommend UPS Expedited. The shipment arrives quickly and insurance value covers the parts if there is damage or something goes missing. You also get your new exhaust or intercooler quickly with this method. If you order something large like a bumper or a quantity of a larger part I recommend you contact us for a shipping quote.

If you have any shipping questions feel free the contact us and we will help you with any shipping questions.

– Derrick

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Portland Auto Show AKA Derrick checks out the Mazda 2

I went to the Portland Auto Show a few weekends ago to see the new cars for the upcoming year, I know we’ve talked about it already but I really wanted to talk about it. Ok, ok you got me, I really just want another opportunity to talk about / drool over the Mazda 2. Mazda brought a standard model green version to the show. They had it on a fancy display pedestal surrounded with one of those black rope separators you use to keep people in line at the bank.

My first thought after seeing the car in person is “small”. Seeing it in pictures and looking at one in person gives you a better scale of a vehicle size. If you haven’t seen a Mazda 2 in person it is bigger than a 88-92 Ford Festiva but smaller than a 90-94 323 hatchback.

On the outside the cars lines look better than pictures have shown. I walked around the car checking it out from all angles and I couldn’t find a spot that look off or I would want to change right off the bat. The wheels they used on the Mazda 2 are a good looking 8 spoke wheel.

One thing I did not see was the cool looking tail lights that can bee seen on the Japanese models. You can see the LED pattern in the tail light housing below. If they are not an option for North America we will be importing the lights.

I wasn’t allowed to hop in the car but I was able to get a good look at the inside. It is roomy for a small car. The inside of the car says Mazda 3. The trim, and design of the interior will make any Mazda 3 owners feel right at home. I had a chance to ride in a 2008 model tuned by AutoExe in Tokyo several years ago. The interior looks really close to the earlier models not sold in North America. Mazda says the interiors for the North America models will be upgraded and have a better feel. I am thinking this will be quality of materials more than styling.

Last but not least Mazda was giving away cool cans of Mazda 2 energy drink! They told me it tastes like Red Bull but I and going to save this souvenir.


Can -O-Zoom

While I was at the show I checked out the Ford Fiesta to see how close it was to the 2 since they share the same platform. The fit and finish of the Ford left something to be desired. From the exterior to the interior styling you can see where Mazda had put in little touches to make the car look or perform better. Even the exhaust on the Mazda 2 looked better constructed than the Fiesta.

After my trip to the auto show I can say I still want a Mazda 2 and I can’t wait to get one.

– Derrick

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Shirt Design Contest Update!

In that last blog we forgot to mention the best part!

In addition to recognition, we’ll be providing a $100 non transferable gift certificate to be used toward the purchase of any of our CorkSport line of products for the individual whose design is chosen. Additionally, we will be providing awards to the 2nd and 3rd place designers as well and sending the winning designed T-shirt to the top 5 designers.

Get those creative juices flowing and let’s see what you’ve got!