CorkSport Coilover Development Process

There are many features and design elements that can be incorporated into coilovers so when CorkSport decided to design new coilovers for the Mazda 3 and Mazdaspeed 3 we had to come up with priorities. We asked the Mazda community what features they wanted to see incorporated and what we came up with and will be releasing in the near future fulfills all of those wants and needs at a competitive price.

You told us you wanted inverted struts. We decided on a 45mm inverted strut body for the fronts and traditional strut bodies for the rear. There are some huge advantages to inverted struts. Inverted refers to a strut that is built upside down. The shaft that moves actually holds the gas or oil in some cases. Traditionally this is held in the lower section of the strut and moved up and down as the control arm moved up and down. The first huge advantage of inverted struts is the unsprung weight. This refers to the weight that your suspension holds. If the weight is on a portion of the suspension that moves this is referred to as sprung weight which we limited by moving the factory oil and strut body to a hard-mounted body position so the only weight that has to move is a hollow body.

The second advantage of inverted struts is side loading. With Macpherson-style struts in the front, your suspension is literally held together by the strut. By increasing the surface area on the strut tubes we increased the rigidly of the structure to make a more stable suspension, which is great if you like a good autocross day, track day or a drive through the twisties.

The rear of the Mazdaspeed 3 and Mazda 3 uses a multilink suspension meaning the rear is tied together in a way that the suspension doesn’t hold any load. There was little need to go to an inverted strut in the rear so we decided against it.

For those of you out there that need data, we have what you want.

If you have ever tried to dig up data on coilovers, you may have found that it was hard to actually get the compression and rebound on the settings. Now I am not sure if this is because it is a tightly guarded secret or most companies just don’t fully test their struts before sending them out, but we wanted to make sure that ours would be the best option on the market and outlast the factory struts in every way so we tested all of the struts for rebound and compression on professional tooling.

The data below breaks down rebound and compression into six twists of the dampener knob. They are 15-way adjustable but by showing the six major steps the data is a little easier to absorb. Now you can have the important data that no one else seems to want to share.

Another important part about choosing coilovers is comfort. Yes, they will be stiffer than stock but there are ways to limit the stiffness so that the system is not undrivable on harsh roads.

Up front, we added helper springs to make those little bumps and potholes take less impact on your vehicle. It can also save those nice wheels from bends and dings. The 15-way adjustable front and rear also help. With easy adjustment, you can go soft for the weekdays and stiffer for the weekends. You can also combine dampening and swaybar adjustments to make that perfect combination for your driving habits.

After you really get comfortable with the adjustments you can start changing end link preload, sway bar adjustment, strut dampening, camber settings, and toe settings.

In January, CorkSport released the front camber kit for the Mazdaspeed 3. Aside from the obvious ability to change camber, these camber plates have a lot of advantages over the factory camber plates so we decided to incorporate these into our coilover design. Using thick machined aluminum, high-grade bolts and tightly machined plates and bearings they will hold up to almost all abuse. They also get rid of the unwanted flex in the factory rubber mounts.

Now that we have covered the front coilovers we can learn a little about the rears. Because the system is a multilink rear suspension we have a separate spring and shock combo. In order to again have great ride quality with great handling we went with a progressive spring. In order to have ride height adjustability, we produced an adjustment device for the spring that is easily adjusted with an Allen wrench from the bottom of the spring.

The rear shocks are 15-way adjustable just like the fronts and can be adjusted in length to match any setup of the coilover springs. We have also accommodated for the differences between the Gen1 and Gen2 struts so everyone can enjoy these coilovers. For those people who like a little more camber in the rear, you don’t have to worry because we are currently in the development of camber adjusters for the rear.

Even at the lowest settings, we were able to dial camber into factory spec but some of us like more adjustments to their suspension settings. Soon CorkSport will release our camber adjustments for the rear. There will be another blog on camber coming soon.

We are in the final stages of testing on the coilovers and will be announcing the release soon! To be included on our pre-release list for advance information on this product.

Product Release! CorkSport Mazdaspeed 3/Mazda 3 Front Lower Arm Bar

CorkSport is pleased to announce the release of the CorkSport Front Lower Arm Brace for the Mazdaspeed 3 and Mazda 3.

The latest addition in a comprehensive line of suspension products designed by CorkSport to strengthen the weak points in the Mazdaspeed 3 OEM underbody design, the CorkSport Front Lower Arm Brace strengthens chassis rigidity and minimizes flex by tying the lower control arms together.

Designed to fit seamlessly with the OEM control arms, this easy to install suspension component will provide improved steering control and help to maintain the alignment of the vehicle.

The CorkSport Lower Arm Brace has a stainless steel tubular design and CNC machined ends that will help to maintain a lightweight frame while adding structural rigidity. It has been powder coated for added durability and a long-lasting finish, even in extreme weather conditions.

This latest release comes on the heels of another product release by CorkSport also designed to reduce undesirable chassis flex, the CorkSport Mazda 3 and Mazdaspeed 3 Underbody 4-Bar Brace Set. This suspension enhancement links the frame to the sub-frame locking the sub-frame in place for increased control under hard cornering and acceleration.

Immediately after I installed the CorkSport Mazdaspeed 3 Underbody Four Bar Set, I felt a difference in handling and responsiveness, said CorkSport customer, Matt Kellogg, I saw an improvement in cornering and lap times on the track as a result of adding this product to the undercarriage of my Mazdaspeed 3. This is a great addition whether you use your Mazdaspeed 3 as your daily driver or for the track

The CorkSport Lower Arm Brace and CorkSport Underbody Four Bar Set are available for purchase along with a number of other suspension enhancement products at https://www.corksport.com.

SkyActiv vs. The Traditional Fuel Injected Motor

After releasing the CorkSport Mazda 3 SkyActiv Power Series Intake, we received several questions about the differences between the SkyActiv and traditional motors. We are writing this technical post to provide some insights into the differences we have seen while testing and developing new parts for the SkyActiv engine.

SkyActiv engine is a phrase from Mazda that denotes their direct injected, high-compression motors. This is a technology similar to how diesel engines run, in that it is direct injected and one of the many reasons the SkyActiv engine is able to get such high gas mileage.

Your average fuel injected motor runs 10.0:1 compression and fuel pressures of around 45psi whereas the SkyActiv engine runs a very high-compression of 14.0:1 and extremely high fuel pressure of up to 3000psi. Most people will think 3000psi is a typo, but I assure you it is not.

The piston pictured to the right shows how different SkyActiv pistons are compared to a conventional motor. It is a much more complex piston shape that includes a cavity in the center where the spark plug fires to provide a heat-loss reduction. Fuel is sprayed at the piston in order to prevent detonation or “knock”, allowing the engine to run leaner while making more power.

Another big difference is that the fuel is dispersed into the air inside the cylinder. A conventional fuel injected motor will mix the fuel and air in the intake manifold or in the intake manifold runners. Because fuel normally acts as a cleaning agent for the valves, this could be seen as a negative for the SkyActiv engine design.

We have all seen the commercials about how the gas cleans your engine. This is true, but when we move the fuel out of the intake manifold and into the cylinders, this benefit no longer exists making it more critical to maintain the engine. Adding a CorkSport SkyActiv intake will help with this by keeping the engine clean of dust and pollutants and the filter can be reused time and time again.

There are many great benefits to both the design and functionality of Mazda’s new SkyActiv engines. In initial testing our CX-5 saw increased torque and almost 40mpg.

We are looking forward to developing many more aftermarket performance parts to support this new technology!

Brydon-

Related SkyActive Parts

Vote for June’s Reader Car of the Month!

Well CorkSport readers, it’s that time again. Time to choose a car of the month!

You might remember last month, where we ended up with Christian’s Mazdaspeed 3 as our winner.

This month, shockingly, we’ve got a Mazda 3 and a Mazdaspeed 3. Will this month be a repeat of last month? Or will the Mazda 3 pull off an upset victory?

First up we’ve got Ray’s 2009 Mazdaspeed 3. He’s gone big turbo, and has done just about everything you can do to a Mazdaspeed 3.

Ray has the CorkSport Top Mount Intercooler, CorkSport Downpipe, CorkSport Cat-back Exhaust, CorkSport Cold Air Box, and way more than we can list here.

Our next gladiator in the arena of automotive combat is Joe. He lands the other end of the spectrum, keeping a refined, subtle, OEM look to his car with only clean styling cues to give away the enthusiast inside.

Joe’s car features the CorkSport Power Series Exhaust, and CorkSport Short Ram Intake, along with 5k HIDs in the headlights, and 3k foglights. Coupled with some lowering springs and swaybars, this car is a stealthy animal.

So there you have it everyone, cast your votes on our Facebook page, or by leaving a comment right here on the blog!

– Gwynne “G”

CorkSport Product Development Update

As many of you know, here at CorkSport we always have products in different stages of development and recently have been splitting our time between two areas of the Mazda world, suspension and exhaust.

Because we support so many models, our time gets allocated between several different product lines to ensure we have parts coming out consistently to support our whole customer base. Today, I will be covering just a few of the items I have been working on over the last several weeks and give you an idea of what we have working in the pipeline.

Mazda 3/Mazdaspeed 3

This summer it will be time to step up, or drop down, to a new set of coilovers designed by CorkSport. They will of course be CorkSport quality and be optimized for most of our customer base. Adjustable height, adjustable dampening and front camber adjustment will be a few of the characteristics. We are also working on producing some camber adjusters for the rear as a separate product.

We have also been exploring many options to get internals or a fuel pump upgrade to market over the past several months and we have started preliminary testing and design of CorkSport’s own fuel pump upgrade solution for our customers. We are in the preliminary stages of testing and will be working through the development process over the next several months.

Mazdaspeed 6

Mazdaspeed 6 owners have been lacking options on the market for a front sway bar application for a while but don’t worry, this summer you should have that bar you’ve always dreamed of. Our beta car has had this bar on for a while and with a few revisions it is getting tremendous results in terms of improved handling and feel. We are in the final stage of development, are going into production now and expecting a full release of the product as early as next month.

1999-2005 RX-8

All of you RX-8 fans out there will be glad to know we are in the final stages of development for a single exit exhaust. It has been a long time coming but the drift style exhaust is almost ready for release. We are doing final test fitment now and have identified some beta testers that will be getting the parts on a pre-release later this month. The Beta testers will run the exhaust making sure they like the fitment and sound of the part and will help us to refine our installation instructions to make sure that they are easy to follow before we release it for sale to the public.

Keep watching the blogs because we will be sharing more information that will give and inside look on the engineering and development of many of the parts we are releasing. I will be writing an in depth blog on the coilovers and coilover development and will also be writing a blog on all the information we are learning about fuel pumps, including spill valves, relief valves, fuel injectors, fuel pump internals, and information on the cam that drives the pumps.

Brydon –