The Best Friends of CorkSport

“Porter”

Porter is Kim’s favorite lap dog. He is a 7 year old English Mastiff that weighs only 175lbs!!! He loves hiking, cuddling and drooling wherever he wants.

“Mosby”

Spencer is very fond of his fish Mosby. He is a Betta, his favorite color is atomic tangerine, he enjoys playing rock’em sock’em robots and his favorite food is Jello-O.

“Duke”

Dustin has an amazing cat named Duke that never met a box or bag that he didn’t love. You will often find Dustin’s children carrying Duke around in a bag while he still sleeps soundly inside.

“Jemma”

Jemma is an 11 year old Springer Spaniel whose one goal in life is to get you to throw her a pine cone. Quite extraordinary Jen (her owner) once got Jemma to hold 11 pine cones in her mouth at the same time!!!

Cows and “Momma”

Roe’s pets are spoiled rotten… at least for a little while. They don’t have names except for Momma, otherwise they might be called “Dinner1”, “Dinner2”, etc. They do not get to come inside but they are still very well behaved.

Matt

Matt has 9 tarantulas spanning 8 difference species from 4 different continents around the world. He handles all but two of them (who can have very painful or paralyzing bites). Pictured are his Mexican red knee and his very dangerous Red Slate Ornamental.

“Duke”

Casey was very excited to bring Duke home. He’s only 3 months old but has already decided that rubbing you with a dirty soccer ball until you play with him is his favorite sport.

“Cheetah” and “Cheli”

Cheetah and Cheli are Kelly’s two favorite pals. They love everyone and Cheli even lets the kids ride him! As you can tell from the picture, they are always down to go for a ride themselves!

“Buster”, “Odie” and “Frankie”

Joel and his family are crazy enough to have 3 dogs! Buster is the old man who acts like a puppy, Odie is always in everyone’s business and Frankie won’t leave your side if you even brush up against them. Joel likes to joke that they would go home with the UPS man if he let them.

Tell us about your favorite family members on our Facebook!!!

www.facebook.com/corksport

August 14, 2013August 19, 2013

Raise Your Hood Easily with the CorkSport Hood Strut Lift Kit

Introducing the CorkSport 2010-2013 Mazdaspeed 3 Hood Strut Lift Kit:

Lift your Hood with just the flick of a wrist. Thanks to gas-powered struts the CorkSport Hood Lift Kit will raise your Mazdaspeed 3 hood on its own power once you get it past halfway. Then, just like magic, the hood will stay up for as long as you want. Of course, while the hood is lifted you will have extra room to maneuver thanks to the conveniently located struts. Without the poorly located hood prop-rod blocking your access to the hood, you can now access the entire engine bay as readily as you can find a coffee shop in Seattle.

The CorkSport Hood Strut Lift Kit requires no drilling or modifying to install. With bolt-in compatibility and a short install process, you will be upgraded in no time.

The CorkSport 2010-2013 Mazdaspeed 3 Hood Strut Lift Kit is available online for $109.99. Visit the listing at: https://www.corksport.com/corksport-2010-2013-mazdaspeed-3-hood-strut-lift-kit.html

August 9, 2013

CorkSport Has Gone Mobile

Inside the new CorkSport mobile site

At CorkSport we realize the website we have worked so hard on is not always the easiest to view from a mobile device. With that in mind, we recently released a new version of the site for any of the most popular phone and tablet browsers. We started by having access to the most popular categories front and center to get where you need to go with least amount of hassle or overhead to keep your data usage low and your speeds high.

Our new search is indexed with the latest Google algorithm to get the results you want in the shortest amount of time possible. Once you find the part you want, you are able to enjoy all the functionality you would get from the desktop site.

Pictures are easy to see by simply swiping to the left or right, also, the full color instructions that CorkSport is famous for are available for PDF viewing, you can even share your favorite parts on Facebook or Twitter.

Ordering is easy as well, with all the features of the desktop site and full integration you be assured that your order is just as safe as it could be if you were standing in our showroom with cash. So stop by on your iPad, Galaxy, iPhone, Nexus or anything else you’ve got and let us know what you think.

July 25, 2013February 21, 2018

“Which intercooler should I get?”

“Which intercooler should I get?” At Corksport we get this question almost every day. The debate of top mount intercooler vs. front mount intercooler has been one that has raged on in the forums for years. Just looking around you will see both options on all sorts of cars. So what is the answer?

The Mazdaspeed 3 and Mazdaspeed 6 both come with top mount intercoolers (TMIC’s) from the factory. There are many reasons for this, but the main one is that it is much cheaper to manufacture and install. A Top Mount Intercooler can be installed directly to the engine at the factory so it is ready to drop into the car which saves both time and money.

Beside the TMIC, the other option available is the front mount intercooler (FMIC). Both styles have their pros and cons. The upsides of the TMIC is that it uses the shortest possible path from the turbo to the engine. This reduces the amount of time it takes for the car to accelerate, this feeling can be amplified between shifts when the power comes back on very quickly. The TMIC also is very simple and compact with very few connections and possible places to leak. A TMIC will also weigh very little compared to a FMIC setup and usually is in a place with very good airflow.

The downside of TMIC’s is that they are generally limited in size by the design of the car and can be much smaller than most FMIC’s. They are typically placed very high in the engine bay, raising the car’s center of gravity. Most importantly though, the biggest downside of the TMIC is that it sits in a hot engine bay. Just by sitting on top of the motor, the TMIC can soak up heat thereby decreasing its effectiveness in cooling the air compressed by your turbo.

The principals are mostly the same for the pros and cons of the FMIC. The core of a FMIC can be much larger, and in the case of a properly designed system, can cool temperatures much more effectively. Being placed further away from the engine and out into the stream of air can make the FMIC much cooler and more importantly, more consistent. One last reason that many people love FMIC’s is the look, nothing says I mean business more than a massive bar and plate core smiling in your rear view.

The biggest downside of a FMIC is that the install process is much longer. Other downsides of FMIC’s can be the much longer piping needed to route compressed air to them. This piping can increase turbo lag and usually has many couplers that can have the potential to leak or cause other issues.

So what does CorkSport say? As a general rule we would say if you don’t plan to add more than 50-100 horsepower, a top mount intercooler will work just fine and be much easier on your plans and wallet. If you eventually want to go wild with your car and build it up much higher than stock, you will probably want to look hard at a front mount intercooler. Our advice would be to try to plan in advance what you want out of the car so that you only have to buy parts once.

Happy spooling!

July 8, 2013

Inside the upcoming CorkSport Blow Off Valve

When you look at the blow off valves (BOV) and bypass valves (BPV) on the market today you see many examples of the same thing with little to no innovations. For those of you that aren’t aware, BOV’s and BPV’s are valves that vent pressurized air in the tract between the turbo and the throttle body. This prevents the turbo from suddenly stopping or slowing as those can cause unwanted bearing wear on the turbo. A BOV vents this pressurized air into the atmosphere (into the engine bay). A BPV vents that air back into the intake just after the mass air flow (MAF) sensor. Venting back into the intake allows the ECU to correctly meter that air that it has already accounted for. Many times when venting to atmosphere you can get a momentarily rich condition because the ratios are off.

We were talking about innovation though, the last great innovation in valve technology for turbos was probably years ago with pull type valves like the SSQV from HKS. Many years have passed since then and not much has changed, outside of the few valves that partially vent to atmosphere and route the rest back to the intake tract. Typically now you just see one copy after another of someone else’s idea. SURE, it can be hard to innovate in the blow off valve market but we were convinced there was something exciting we could do.

We speak often about your ideas sparking our innovative minds, this project was started by just one of those customer suggestions. We started with a customer submission of using wave springs that led us to design a new valve design to reduce the size and weight of the moving parts.

Key Features of the upcoming patent pending CorkSport Blow Off Valve:

Reduction of spring height

With the use of a wave spring we are able to reduce the spring height by 50%. The traditional spring sits at 40mm and the CS wave spring sits at a 20mm height. These springs both provide the same force and will move the same distance before experiencing coil-bind.

Reduction of piston size

Because the spring is 50% smaller we are able to reduce the piston and still maintain the same amount of movement. As you can see, just changing to the wave spring we were able to decrease the piston by 33%!!!

What does that all mean?

The reduction in mass is all well and good, but just being smaller isn’t the only benefit (even though that is pretty cool). With the force (F) being the same and the mass (m) decreasing by 33% we can see how the mass relates to acceleration (a) in the formula F=ma. Rearranged, this becomes a=F/m. This means we have accelerated the actual speed of the valve, which means the valve is able to react much faster than a larger valve with a traditional spring (33% faster!) Because the blow off valve is a safety feature to protect the turbo from premature wear, this increase in acceleration can help increase the longevity of the turbo and the system as a whole.

What does all this innovation look like?

With the reduction in the size of these key parts, we can reduce the body size. This can be especially helpful in situations with airboxes, custom turbo and intercooler kits or even in universal situations where space is at a premium. Below you can see a comparison of similar BOV’s, the spring chamber on our design is significantly smaller but the function is not lost; in fact, we improved it!

To maximize flow, we pushed the piston area out to ensure a larger venting area, this reduces the time it takes to vent the air and allows larger turbos to vent more efficiently. As a blow off valve, this certainly pushes the envelope, we think we can find even more applications for this kind of innovation. We are very proud to be able to offer things for the Mazda market we helped create and will continue to engineer parts that push the scene for you.