At some point in time, you may have seen this car getting featured on our CS Facebook and Instagram pages.
He’s pretty well known on Instagram, and across several social media groups. We had a couple requests from customers to do an interview with Larrison aka @blkaut3!
Luckily, he’s a friend of mine so I was excited to do a little write up on his car. I gave Larrison a questionnaire to answer about the modding process he took with his car.
Hope you guys enjoy the read, and seeing a bit of how this beautiful machine was put together!
Question 1: When did you buy your car?
“It all started in the summer of 2014. I bought it from a Carmax, and had to have it shipped from Texas to Las Vegas. I ended up trading in my 2013 Mazda 3 for this. I used to have a slammed Mazda 626, after owning that, I knew I wanted something faster.”
Question 2: What took you down the Mod path you went with and why?
“With the 626, I was limited on how much I could modify, so I was excited to really do some things with this. I started doing minor mods here and there, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted my end result to be until my K04 blew. From there, I threw in a GTX3071 and all the supporting mods. I was ready for something more powerful! This is what really started everything.”
Question 3: What made you want to go with a track-inspired look?
“At first I just wanted something simple and clean. But, then I saw Brian’s Car (The owner of BMSPEC)
When he started producing his V1 wing risers, I knew I needed to jump on it. I put on the wing and splitter, and after that it was clear this was the path I was wanting to go with the car. After a bit, Brian and I established somewhat of a partnership. Promoting his products is what really made my car look like it does today. There is more to come, as I am always working on it.”
Question 4: What do you enjoy most about owning this car?
“My favorite part would have to be owning something that is one of a kind. Something that has my own personal touches that make it mine. There isn’t another car that’s exactly like it, which is what makes it so fun. Getting to work on something that reflects my personality and style is what it’s all about.”
It was awesome of Larrison to share with us a bit of history on his MS3. We look forward to seeing his progress continue!
Cheers, Brett @ CS.
Do you have ideas of any owners you’d like us to interview? Let us know in the comments or on social media!
Customer Feature: Larrison Gervacio (AKA BLKAUT) February 21st, 2018CorkSport
Recently, we’ve been posting a lot of blogs on clubs and connection in the community, and I’m sure you’re wondering what that’s all about. We’re hoping to help people get connected in their local areas and start throwing more meets!
What way to better understand how to get a HUGE group of MAZDA ENTHUSIASTS together than ask a Mazda Meet Organizer?
Keith Eggert has been an influential event planner for a lot of West Coast Mazda clubs. Below, he walks us through how it was for him setting up the first couple Mazda Takeover events. We hope it inspires you to start the process of creating your own!
KEITH:
Let me start off by saying that I am by no means a professional at getting a large gathering of people together, nor am I very organized. However, I love the Mazda community and enjoy connecting with fellow Mazda enthusiasts.
A unique opportunity was laid out before me: Get as many people with Mazdaspeeds together here in my area. (For those of you who don’t know where I’m from, I currently reside in the greater Boise, Idaho area.)
Dale Owen, head honcho of the Mazdaspeed Idaho group on Facebook, who also runs Gem Tuning (yes, he tuned my car), approached me with a yearly meet idea.
He explained how it’d be a huge help if I lent a hand in helping organize our yearly Mazdaspeed group meet, since I live in the epicenter of the majority of the Idaho members. Of course I said “Yes”, and just minutes after I told him yes, I had an idea: “Let’s do it big!”, I said to Dale:
“Let’s make this thing huge, not just a simple one-day hangout, let’s put this party on the map!”
He reluctantly agreed to that, and since that day over two years ago, I took the reins and ran with it. I figured I had to give it a name, but more importantly, I had to figure out what we were going to do for two whole days. It had to be exciting, it had to fill empty time, it had to connect Mazda Groups from all surrounding areas. Most importantly, it needed to be fun. I decided to call it the Mazda Takeover because that’s how I envisioned it; Mazda after Mazda after Mazda, driving down the road to locations in the valley where events were set up. It was a beautiful thing to see.
I invited anyone in the Mazda Community willing to make the drive from as far as Utah to come up. I invested about three months into getting known, talking to people, and helping members with their questions on the Utah Mazda Enthusiasts Facebook group. It paid off. As luck would have it Cody Allington is kind of the go-to guy down in Utah, and with his help he generated interest, and brought up 7 cars with him in the first year, which blew me away given that the planning span of 3 months was all the time I gave him to gather a group willing to drive up.
Friday through Sunday. That was the game plan, come to find out, clearly waaaay too short of a time frame.
Between the Friday evening’s Line the Streets meet, Saturday mornings dyno day, Saturday nights drag racing, and Sunday’s farewell, I think everyone managed to get about 3 hours of sleep each night. That needed to change. We absolutely needed an extra day; that way people wouldn’t feel burned out, and would have time to relax and just talk to people. So, for Year Two, we did just that.
Mazda Takeover’s second year was much more organized, spanning from Thursday night through Sunday.
Three days to dyno, race, and have a scenic cruise. It was perfect, and even had people making the trip in the late evening on Saturday just to make two passes down the drag strip before the lights went out and everyone went home. We now have a perfect amount of days, but there was still quite a bit of downtime that we attempted to fill with a garage day, which was way too stressful given that it was hours before we all left to go drag racing. That won’t be happening in Year Three.
So what did I learn in all of this?
Two successful years, triple the amount of attendance from people outside of Idaho, states I never contacted via Social Media wondering about the event and contacting me directly… I think I have a recipe to keep this thing going.
Here is just a little bit of wisdom should you find yourself wanting to have a huge meet.
First things first: PLAN PLAN PLAN.Do not fill a day with too much. Two events per day spaced out is perfect. Dyno in the morning from 9-2, then have everyone meet for a BBQ from 4-7. However, you wish to fill the day, keep in mind: the key to a successful meet is to utilize the reason you are there. If you get Mazda people together, do Mazda stuff. Go for a cruise, schedule time for how long that drive will take, and any pit stops needed for photo shoots, fuel, etc.
Second. When doing two events during a meet, NEVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES DO TWO CAR RELATED EVENTS IN THE SAME DAY. Meaning, don’t schedule a dyno day and an evening of drag racing in the same day. Can you? Sure you can. Should you? Probably not. Cars are like people, too much stress and they break. Don’t need to go breaking any cars; this is supposed to be fun. And if you do, know your groups of attendees. Scheduling an Autocross event and a drag event on the same day is far more acceptable, since autocross drivers are less susceptible to drag racing, and a drag car sure as hell won’t ever see an autocross course.
Third. Keep in mind, you are doing this for a group so that everyone can have fun, yourself included. Call ahead, give businesses a heads up that a group is coming on a certain day, that way it alleviates stress on the business and on you as the administrator. The less stress, the more fun everyone has.
With those three key ingredients, you can build the foundation for a successful meet.
Keep in mind, if you are planning on doing a multi-day meet, the more notice the better. Also, keep in mind that not everyone can make it, even with six months of notice. Life happens fast, and things change quickly.
I think the biggest thing I learned is to not fear failure.
The first year of the Mazda Takeover, THE DAY OF the start of the meet, I had doubt, fear that no one would show, a sinking feeling that three months of phone calls and planning was all for nothing. Push that aside, people will come. Hype up your meet, make it sound like the best weekend people near you with a Mazda could ever have. I did just that for two years worth of events. Last year Corksport sent Luke McCarvel and Barett Strecker to the event. This year I got Luke and Barett, and Brett White got the chance to join them.
Evolutionary Performance out of Salt Lake even shut it’s doors for the weekend to relax and have a good time.
So that just goes to show: If you never settle for OK, and constantly push to have bigger and better meets, performance shops will come to your meet, retailers can come to your meets, tuners can come to your meets, but most importantly, people will have a good time.
Lastly, a shameless plug for the Mazda Takeover 2018. – June 7th-11th in Boise, Idaho.
Dyno, Drag, Karting, BBQ, Scenic Cruise. Whether you drive a Mazdaspeed, Miata, Protege, or just regular Mazda that you’re proud of, you won’t want to miss this year’s event. We hope to see you there. Camping is encouraged!!!
If you’re looking for an excuse to connect with your local Nator Club, Mazdaspeed Group, or Mazda community, Keith has shown you how to stick with it and come up with a great event. However, if you don’t want to plan your own, stay tuned as we’ll be working with clubs all over the US to promote events and meetups throughout 2018.
If you’re a club and you have an event page, email kim@corksport.com so we can be sure to get you on the calendar!
Guest Blog – Mazda Takeover Event September 13th, 2018CorkSport
We here at CorkSport are proud to announce the relaunch of the Mazda 3 Rear Motor Mount.
Yes, you read that correct, this is a re-launch. At CorkSport we push ourselves to design and develop new and interesting products every day, with that, we try new and innovative manufacturing designs and methods in an attempt to create exceptional, competitive, cost-effective products for our loyal customers.
Sometimes those new and innovative manufacturing methods end up not being as awesome as we originally expected. This is just part of the designing and learning process. Let’s get into the details.
The original, let’s call it V1, Mazda3 RMM used a new-to-us manufacturing method of applying the polyurethane to the billet aluminum body called vulcanizing. The billet aluminum body and the steel sleeves are mounted in a fixture then liquid polyurethane was poured into the assembly and cooled until the polyurethane had set to the final hardness. This process appeared to be very promising; each part was set up identically, it was nearly impossible to have any missing parts not sent to you, and most importantly the polyurethane was adhered to the billet aluminum body and therefore could not fall out. More on that last bit later.
We moved forward with the manufacturing method and had a few samples made with various polyurethane durometers ranging from 60A to 80A. After various testing, we determined that 70A was the best compromise of response and NVH (Noise, Vibration, Harshness) experienced by the driver. We continued testing for a few months to verify long-term durability and found no issues. Hooray! We moved forward with production to get this new great Mazda6 RMM out the door to you.
Unfortunately, it appears that our testing period just wasn’t quite long enough. Eventually, the polyurethane would fail but fail in a style we had never experienced before. Long story short, polyurethane has excellent compression strength compared to the tensile strength. The polyurethane was being pulled/split apart due to the forces of the engine.
Now we had a few options of how to redesign the Mazda 6 Rear Motor Mount after going through the failure analysis.
We could have simply stuck with the same design and just increased the stiffness of the polyurethane. Increasing the durometer rating of the poly increases the tensile strength, but this would have resulted in an unsatisfactory driving experience for you which was unacceptable.
The other option was to start from scratch again to create a new design that did not compromise the driving experience or the durability; with challenge comes innovation.
Again we went through many different designs, with the greatest challenge coming in the form of retaining the polyurethane pucks. Typically the polyurethane pucks are retained by whatever the mount is bolting to, but with the Mazda motor mount, the steel sleeves extend far past the outer edge of the polyurethane pucks. This leaves the pucks free to slide out of the billet aluminum body and cause a major failure.
Using the conventional polyurethane puck style, we developed a design that would work, but more than doubled the number of parts needed which increased the chance for something to go wrong and drives up the cost. This design is shown below:
The red arrows show the direction the conventional polyurethane puck would slide out of the body. The red circles show the puck retention system to hold the washer and pucks in the body. This retention design required many parts to be successful.
With the cost going through the roof we had to go back to the drawing board. There had to be a better way… and there was.
The third major iteration shown above solved the problems of the V2 design and got us away from the vulcanized polyurethane of the V1 design. Things were looking good. With the V3 design, the polyurethane pucks are pressed into the billet aluminum body. The pucks have ribs, shown with the red circles that are just large enough to keep the puck in place, but small enough to let the puck be pressed into the body.
With this, we were able to make some clever designs to the RMM to keep it centered in the engine and chassis brackets on the vehicle. The smaller diameter puck extends out to the ends of the steel sleeves; this keeps the entire rear motor mount centered. The large diameter puck retains itself in the body and allows the associated steel sleeve free to slide for easy installation; shown with the red arrows.
Now… does it work? YES! Pretty fantastically, we might add!
We have had this design on a handful of vehicles, one of those being the CorkSport Mazda 3 Racecar during the SCCA Run-Offs at Indianapolis Speedway. Other than some dirt and grime, the tested RMM looks great.
You were probably expecting this blog to be all about the details and reasons you should buy this performance RMM for your Mazda 3, Mazda 6, or CX-5. All those details can be found on our website, and I invite you to check them out.
What we really want to get across here is this:
First and foremost, we will always do the best we can to take care of you and your car if there is ever an issue or concern with your CorkSport part.
Second, if you are a driving enthusiast, if you go driving for the sake of just driving, then you need this RMM in your life. It will completely change and improve your driving experience, plain and simple.
-Barett, CS Engineering
The Mazda 3 Rear Motor Mount 2.0: Back & Better September 13th, 2018CorkSport
Ever wondered how to connect with your local Mazda crews and clubs?
Or have you ever gotten connected and then lost your ride somehow? For some of us it’s a crash, others of us sell our beloved Mazda and aim at our next dream car, or heck, even the necessary minivan.
What happens then? Not only did you lose your favorite car, but seemingly you lost out on the community as well.Does it make sense to show up to your favorite meets if you no longer drive the “proper” vehicle?
When it comes to the Nator groups, the love is still there regardless of what your next ride.
According to Micha Fullen, this is exactly how it goes; and it’s about so much more than the cars themselves:
“While at the annual Midwest meet this year in St Louis Missouri, washing my hair in the shower I had a thought, “Micha, why do you still come to this event when you don’t even own a Mazdaspeed anymore?”
I told myself, that being a Mazdaspeed owner past, present or future, is like being in a family. Especially when you involve yourself in the community and clubs that are offered throughout the country. Me, I’m a Nator Guy.
Year after year, we collectively travel thousands of miles to attend an event centered around vehicles that some of us don’t even own anymore. It’s crazy huh? Do the same thing, show up without owning the ‘correct’ Model Vehicle, at a VW or Honda meet and you get blacklisted and shunned.
Mazdaspeed owners don’t kick you out, or tell you that you shouldn’t be there. We just call each other; funny, and sometimes very rude, names. Then ask to race your new vehicle on a track, dragstrip or parking lot. (More recently it’s been even helpful to all of them that I bought a truck… because we all know with spirited driving, and some showing off, something is bound to go wrong)
I am closer to my Mazdaspeed family than I am to my own. This has been true since I bought my Speed 3 Jun of 2011. I had some problems with my car(s) and my Mazdaspeed (Nator) family came to my aid. But when that same family had problems of their own, I drove many miles or sometimes across multiple states to help them.
Corksport goes out of their way to attend these events. Not so much pushing parts, but to welcome family with open arms and stay connected to the grass roots of our community.
I met Barrett this year and even having never talked to him, he was the top 3 nicest dudes I have ever met. He got involved and talked shop with the majority of everyone in attendance. Kim is also a major voice in the community, listening to what the people want and bouncing ideas off of people to find how CorkSport can continuously push and evolve in this platform. She shows up to multiple events a year, stays in contact even throughout the winter and is always helping her “brothers and sisters” with their own endeavors, even if it doesn’t involve Corksport.
This year, if you were at the Midwest meet, you would see that a good majority of people have moved on to new platforms, specifically the new ecoboost options from Ford being very popular. Adrienne K with her Focus RS, Matt D with his FoST and Ryan P with his brand new FiST, and myself, I went way to the left with the new Raptor (Hey it has 2 turbos mmmmmkay).
It doesn’t matter what happens in your life, or even if you have moved on, we all got our start with Mazdaspeeds and we always stick with Family.”
As you see, being a Mazda owner is about the community, the family, the connection to other Mazdaspeed Enthusiasts.
And being an enthusiast isn’t always defined by the fact you still own a Mazda. It’s defined by being a car family. There may be groups that require you to own a Mazda to show up, but when it comes to Nator, once a Mazdaspeed Nator Family member, always one.
If you’re curious about where to connect, who to reach out to, or how to get in touch with your local Mazda club, check out the list below.
While we would love for this list to be exhaustive, it’s not, so if you’re currently involved in a club not listed, please let us know and we’ll be sure to make it easier for other CorkSport followers to connect with your group!
The exhaust system on your Mazda is a loved and cherished part of your car’s character and performance.
It emits glorious sounds that keep you entertained and smiling from ear-to-ear, but if you can believe it, is only attached to your Mazda by a few soft rubber hangers.
Yes, your hard-earned stainless steel exhaust is ONLY suspended by small pieces of rubber…
Here at CorkSport, we think it’s time that you show your exhaust system some love… it’s time to take the rubber off.
We present to you: the CorkSport Performance Polyurethane Exhaust Hanger kit.
The exhaust hanger kit replaces the four rubber exhaust hangers that would otherwise be used to mount and suspend your CorkSport Performance Exhaust System; the two rear hangers on the axle back section and the two mid-pipe hangers.
But why is polyurethane better?
Well there are a few reasons:
First, polyurethane is more durable and heat resistant than rubber so the hangers will perform better for a much longer period of time.
Second, and most importantly, the polyurethane used in the CorkSport Performance Kit uses a stiffer compound compared to the OE. The polyurethane hangers have 75A durometer stiffness vs the OE rubber at as low as 50A durometer. The increased stiffness helps minimize the movement of the exhaust while still providing the necessary flex between the car chassis and the exhaust system.
All-together, this means your performance exhaust system for you Mazda 3, Mazda 6, or Mazda CX-5 will not be able to move around under the car during spirited driving such as back roads, auto-crossing, or whatever motorsport event you prefer.
Keeping your exhaust system in place reduces your chance of damaging your beloved Mazda or the exhaust; it’s a win/win.
-Barett @ CS
PS: In addition to these hangers, we also carry the following other exhaust hanger options:
