The newly released Mazda 2 Front Sway Bar will reduce body roll during cornering and give the driver a crisper road feel. By strengthening the lower suspension connection across the front of the Mazda 2, the CorkSport Mazda 2 Front Sway Bar is able to reduce oversteer or understeer by complimenting other suspension upgrades and reduces body lean which keeps the outside tire in better contact with the ground in turns.
The Mazda 2 Front Sway Bar is made from CNC machined 7/8” 4130 steel tube and provides 60% more stiffness than stock front sway bar. The powder coated black finish offers long lasting durability and performance. The included polyurethane mounting bushings eliminate the sloppy handling caused by stock rubber bushings and offer long life and resistance to common contaminants that would destroy rubber bushings.
Thoroughly tested by CorkSport during autocross and recently listed in Mazda’s booth at SEMA 2011 in the concept Mazda 2 turbo car, the CorkSport Front Mount Sway Bar provides the Mazda 2 with a distinct racing advantage over stock sway bar and has been highlighted in publications such as Car Throttle, Autoweek, and Carbuzz.
The CorkSport Mazda 2 Front Sway Bar and has been tuned to compliment the CorkSport Mazda 2 Rear Torsion Bar and can be purchased as a kit for the competitive price of $268.20 or as an enhancement for your existing suspension upgrades for $199.00.
The CorkSport team has been on the road this week first sponsoring and attending the 5th annual EECMM (Epic East Coast Mazda Meet) held in Robbinsville, NC (think Tail of the Dragon) and then onto Las Vegas for the SEMA (specialty Equipment Market Association) show where more than 100,000 attendees and 2000 exhibitors met for four days at the largest annual automotive gathering and car show.
Appropriately named, EECMM was truly an epic event. Mazda enthusiasts from all over the east met up in Robbinsville, NC for five full days of cruising stretches of the famous Hwy 129, deals gap, a car show with awards and plenty of raffle prizes and evenings of BBQ’s and parties at the smoky mountain mansion with no shortage of good times had by all.
If you are not already familiar, the Tail of the Dragon is an 11 mile stretch with 318 curves and is America’s number one sports car road. The nearby Cherohala Skyway is another 60 miles of scenic mountain highway for the driving enthusiast to enjoy a more leisurely ride with it’s long, sweeping corners and scenic views.
CorkSport spent Saturday with the Epic crew. The car show featured about 60 cars and CorkSport was on hand with giveaways for the all of the attendees. Following the show the group went out for a ride on the Tail of the Dragon run while CorkSport prepared back at the mansion for a focus group. We then sat down with a group of customers and got the unique opportunity to gain feedback on what we are doing that works and what we can do to improve our products and services for the Mazda community. We stayed for some of the evening’s festivities, but had to run so we could catch an early flight out and onto Las Vegas the following morning.
What a great group of people and awesome event! If you haven’t made it to EECMM yet, you need to go! Keep posted on 2012’s event and stay connected on the EECMM facebook page.
Back to the other side of the country, SEMA kicked off on Monday.
Mazda had the MX-5 Spyder on display at this year’s show. This Lighterweight version of the Miata ditches the heavier retractable roof and in its place had a single-panel bikini soft top made by Haartz. Weight savings came in other forms as well with a light weight lithium ion racing battery and light weight Advan RS wheels. It got a the 2.0 liter 4-cylinder turbo enabled biofuel engine which promotes the greener direction Mazda is moving in.
As promised, the concept Mazda 2 turbo was also on display at the show with a Speed3 263-horsepwer turbocharged, direct-injected MZR 2.3 Liter engine under the hood.
If you can’t wait for the Mazdaspeed2 to go into full production, the concept car built by Autobarn for the one lap of America race is available for purchase for an astounding ticket price of $94,999.
The booth also had a slightly less modded Mazda2 tuned by 3dCarbon, a MX-5 Super 20 custom and a classic Cosmo on display.
Flat-finished paint was all the rage at this year’s show and was embraced by hotrods and custom cars alike. The level of flatness/gloss ranged in scale from matte to reduced sheen and was available in every color from pearl white to bright orange.
There was a lot to be seen at this show. It could not possibly all be covered in this post, but an honorable mention extends to the new Lamborghini LP700-4 Aventador in the Pirelli booth. It has a v12 engine and can achieve 700 HP and top speeds of 270 mph. It was hard to resist falling in love with it!
The show continues today with Derrick still in attendance who I am sure will follow this post with some thoughts of his own from the show.
It’s been a long week, but it is always great to get out and and get to know our customers better, put faces to names, and find out what’s going on in the community.
Gwynne –
SEMA & EECMM 2011 – Mazda Events and Car Shows East to West! September 13th, 2018CorkSport
Our customers are our lifeblood. We live by this understanding each and every day and appreciate that you put your trust in CorkSport products and choose CorkSport brand parts for your Mazda performance needs. Proof? Many of you may get a sense of this from the quality of our customer interactions. Hopefully, you find our staff easy to reach, courteous, helpful, and knowledgeable.
From our transparent shipping costs and our dedicated staff and customer service, to our rewards program for our loyal customers, and customer collaboration efforts, we want to demonstrate how grateful we are for your business each and every day.
I’d like to take this post as an opportunity to expand on the customer collaboration concept. We’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth revisiting with a fresh example.
We’ve conducted numerous focus groups with our customers. In those groups we’ve discussed how our customers want to be involved in the product development process. Overwhelmingly we’ve been told you want to see the development process. You want to see what’s in the pipeline and have a chance to give feedback on the design. Our best most recent example of our efforts to expand our customer’s role in the product development process is our soon to be released camber plates for Mazdaspeed3.
Our knowledgebase is a repository for all sorts of information. For the camber plate development process, we’ve posted several articles in our knowledgebase. Brief summaries are presented below. The interested reader can view each article for more details.
Article 1:
The idea for camber plates came from two customers, Eric & Todd, who turned in product ideas. Our staff reviewed the merits of their suggestion and decided to pursue it.
Article 2:
Our initial design concept was posted for feedback.
Article 3:
Prototype parts were made from the drawings. Ordinarily we’d make one set for testing. This time, we made several extra sets so that if Todd and Eric wanted to get involved in Beta testing, we were positioned to take advantage of the opportunity. After installation and testing in house, Todd took us up on the offer to test a set of the camber plates.
Both Todd and Eric gave us great feedback and even hit the forums and started a discussion. We learned that many people were apprehensive to cut their strut tower to allow for camber adjustment. From our experience we are comfortable cutting sheet metal on a brand new car, understandably many people are not! We returned to the drawing board with the intention to eliminate that requirement. Success!
Article 4:
The biggest problem we had to resolve at this point was spring interference when using the Mazda Genuine struts. This limits negative camber to around -1.5 degrees. We solved this problem by revising our recently released lowering springs to have a tighter wound coils up front.
In summary, we made these changes to the original design as a result of our collaboration efforts with our customers:
• Recessed design to remove the requirement to enlarge the hole in the strut tower.
• Larger strut bolts to reduce camber variation from removal and reinstallation.
• Longer strut bolts to allow for strut brace installations.
• Custom lowering springs to allow for more than -1.5 degree which is limited by the factory chassis using struts.
We expect to release the camber plates and revised lowering springs in early 2012.
Thank you to everyone for their feedback. Special thanks to Todd and Eric for their participation in the development process.
Rich-
CorkSport Customer Collaboration – Camber Plate Development Process September 13th, 2018CorkSport
The time has come for what you say? The time has come to give our Mazda 2 Project Car a real stereo.
Instead of going with the usual tunes only deck, we decided to give the Mazda 2 a really big upgrade. We chose the Pioneer AVH P3300BT which includes DVD video, MP3 playback, iPod/iPhone direct control, and the option to listen to Pandora using the iPhone Pandora app. This top of the line system includes a 5.8” wide screen size with a 16:9 aspect ratio, touch panel operation, built in amplifier, rear view camera input and dual zone audio/video.
To install the system in our project car, we went with the Japanese made Kanatechs Mazda 2, 2 din installation kit. The Kanatechs kit uses an OEM quality, exclusive panel, designed to fit the Mazda2’s unique dash and includes pre-formed steel mounting brackets. The other kit on the market, the Metra, uses plastic brackets for a rather flimsy installation and gives car stereo thieves easy access.
The installation kit from Kanatechs is thorough and very easy to follow. After giving the instructions a once over I was ready to get to work. The interior in the Mazda 2 is surprisingly easy to take apart and came out with a Philips screw driver and an M10 headed bolt. The harnesses for the installation kit and the pioneer are all color coded so that was a snap to get connected as well. Overall I spent 2 hours installing the new deck.
The installed unit looks like it belongs in the Mazda 2. Too bad it wasn’t an option when the car was purchased.
There are a few notes from installing the unit which I would keep in mind for future installs.
1st – If your original set-up has steering wheel volume controls, get the steering wheel adapter unit from Kanatechs. It allows you to retain the volume controls on the steering wheel if your new audio unit supports IR control.
2nd – The information display selector will be disabled when the original stereo is removed. I recommend you choose your favorite setting and leave it there. With the stock unit unplugged you will have it set forever.
After a few days driving around in the Mazda 2 with the new unit, I am really enjoying the features. I can just plug in a SD card or a USB flash drive with whatever music I want and I am down the road.
-Derrick
The Time has Come – Project 2 Update September 13th, 2018CorkSport
Former Army Sergeant and 25 year old Iraq War Veteran, Will Buck caught our attention a little while ago when he sent along an impressive graph from a dyno of his 2010 Mazdaspeed 3 that logged 314hp and 349 torque with a stock turbo.
This Speed 3 is his first Mazda, but this Buffalo NY native has been modding cars since he started driving. Even his first Honda Civic ended up with a Zex Nitrous Kit on it.
After blowing up a couple motors on his supercharged Scion TC, Will finally decided it was time for something with a little better performance and reliability and his research led him right to the Mazdaspeed 3.
He recently won the highest horsepower stock turbo MS3 in Georgia award, but is ready to upgrade the turbo to a GTX3071 as his next project.
“I live just outside of Fort Benning, GA now and there is not much of a tuning following out here so I drive the two hours to Atlanta monthly to stay involved with fellow NATOR Georgia members,” said Will. “I spend my free time split between working on the car, home improvement, the Army Reserves and I spend a fair amount of time being active on mazdaspeedforums.org”
He is also passing along his love for speed to his two year old daughter who loves riding in the Mazdaspeed and is often egging her dad on by saying “go, go, go, go,go!” If Will’s dyno chart has anything to say about it, his speed 3 doesn’t disappoint when she asks him to floor it!
Gwynne –
Featured Car of the Month October 2011 – Will Buck September 13th, 2018CorkSport
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