Tag: MazdaSpeed 3

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Product Sneak Peek – CorkSport Fall Line-Up

I attended my first research and development meeting at CorkSport a couple weeks ago and spent the morning and well into the afternoon reviewing product submissions and discussing the viability and potential demand for each of the ideas that were submitted to us.

We reviewed over forty-five product submissions and ranked them on feasibility, development time, demand, and the value it would provide to our customers. Coming out of that meeting, I think customers will be pleased with some of the fantastic products coming to market over the next six months and though we are keeping our cards close to our chest on some of the exciting products we have in store for all you Mazda performance enthusiasts, I will divulge some the new products you can expect to see released in the coming weeks.

Lug Nuts – As early as next week, you can expect to see new CorkSport Extended Lightweight Lug Nuts added to our list of performance accessories. Thanks to the feedback from our Facebook Fans, we will be offering them in black as the overwhelming color of choice. More to come on this product soon!

Shifter Bushings – Coming up before months end will be the CorkSport Shifter Bushings. Removing unwanted play in your car’s shifter mechanism, our bushing kit will greatly improve the feel of shifting in your vehicle.

Gen 1 Mazdaspeed 3 FMIC kit for SRI – Expanding on the success of our recent Gen 2 Mazdaspeed 3 release of a FMIC kit for SRI, CorkSport will be releasing a version for Gen 1 Mazdaspeed 3 drivers by the end of the month! Like our Gen 2 version, the FMIC kit for SRI will provide solid power gains without the lag commonly seen in larger FMIC kit’s that require removal of the crash bar.

Mazdaspeed 6 Rear Sway Bar – Currently on a fall release schedule, the CorkSport Mazdaspeed 6 Rear Sway Bar will greatly improve handling by tightening up the rear suspension. The Rear Sway bar can be purchased stand alone or can be used to compliment the CorkSport Mazdaspeed 6 Front Strut Bar.

CorkSport LED Under Hood Lights – Also on the fall release schedule is a kit that will illuminate your entire engine compartment. The CorkSport LED Under Hood Lights are a low power draw kit that will attach to your battery, includes an automatic on/off switch and will cast a cool blue/white luminescence on your engine bay.

These represent just some of the products you can expect to see in CorkSport’s fall line-up. More will be introduced as the development and testing process winds-up.

Interested in submitting a product idea? Fill out a product idea form for consideration at our next development meeting, https://www.corksport.com/product-ideas.html

Gwynne-

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Making Your Mazdaspeed3 Handle

In my last year of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Utah, I was able to participate in the Formula SAE program. The concept behind Formula SAE is that a fictional manufacturing company has contracted a student design team to develop a small Formula-style race car. Then the prototype race car is to be evaluated for its potential as a production item. When deciding what team I wanted to be on I chose suspension because I knew the real trick in making a fast car is designing a great performing suspension and tuning it to perfection.

In the formula SAE program, the suspension is unrestricted except for safety regulations. Most teams opt for four-wheel independent suspension and almost universally a double-wishbone. Active suspension is legal. Unfortunately, most of us can’t design a one-off suspension for our everyday cars, but we have the ability to upgrade and tune our suspensions to achieve handling nirvana.

The Mazdaspeed3 is a great platform to tune on for power and handling, however, it is a heavier front-wheel drive (FWD) vehicle and some measures need to be taken to minimize understeering. If you are not familiar with understeering, it is when the car doesn’t want to turn as much as you are telling it too. Many of you may have experienced this in other FWD vehicles over the years and know that this tends to be a universal problem. Actually, most production cars are designed to understeer from the factory for safety reasons, but it is especially prevalent in FWD cars. With a few tricks, you can make your car handle much better and minimize unwanted understeer.

Mazdaspeed 3 Rear Sway Bar

The first step to achieving a great performing suspension is upgrading the rear sway bar. The CorkSport Rear Sway Bar is adjustable to help you tune your car to your driving style. By installing a stiffer rear sway bar, the car will want to lose traction in the rear first instead of the front, reducing understeer. If you go stiff enough, the car will begin to oversteer in hard corners, so we recommend starting in the outer-most position with our Rear Sway Bar. If the car feels like it’s still understeering, move the end link to a stiffer setting. If you feel like the car is oversteering too easily, move the end link to a softer position.

Mazdaspeed 3 Front Sway Bar blue and black

For the next step, the CorkSport Front Sway Bar would be a good path. Anti-Sway Bars do more than just keep the car from rolling side-to-side when cornering; they help with the weight transfer of the vehicle during a turn. Normally most of the vehicle weight wants to transfer to the outside tires, but a stiffer sway bar helps weight transfer more evenly, which means the outside tires won’t lose traction as easily. The reduced roll of the vehicle can also help increase driver confidence by improving the cornering potential of the vehicle.

With stiffer sway bars, more of the suspension load is transferred into the chassis. To combat this, extra bracing is helpful to keep the chassis rigid. CorkSport produces a great 1-Piece Front Strut Tower Bar that helps transfer the loads from the struts onto the car more evenly between the strut towers.

Mazdaspeed Front Strut Tower Bar

The CorkSport Rear Chassis Brace Set also reduces rear chassis flex by 15% which can help the stiffer sway bar in the rear by putting more force on the chassis. If you don’t want the full set you can also just get the Rear Chassis Brace that ties together the rear shock towers which will still help out greatly or you can get a CorkSport Chassis Brace to replace the stock chassis brace underneath the car which will increase the stiffness of the chassis between the Mazdaspeed 3 front and rear suspensions.

Once you have gotten to this point your chassis is well braced and your sway bars have reduced the weight transfer during cornering, but there are still a couple more things you can do. CorkSport’s newly released Lowering Springs will lower your car’s center of gravity and increase the spring rate over your stock springs. This provides a stiffer ride that will increase the handling performance of your car while still being great for the street. Not only do they add to the handling of the car, but they will also improve the look by giving your car a more aggressive stance and decreasing the gap between your wheels and fenders. Be careful not to over-lower your vehicle. While it looks good, it can negatively affect the suspension geometry by throwing off the roll center of the vehicle. The CorkSport Lowering Springs decreases the ride of your vehicle to achieve a great look while maintaining the geometry of the suspension.

After springs, upgrading the dampers would be the next suspension improvement I would recommend. CorkSport sells Coilovers for the Mazdaspeed3.  These will replace your factory front struts and rear shocks and give you an adjustable rebound to help dial in your Mazda’s ride.

In this post, I have laid out a great path to making your Speed3 handle even more brilliantly than it already does, but remember, for those of you who autocross, check your rule book to see if any of these upgrades will force you to change to a faster class.

If you have any questions about these products please feel free to gives us a call or shoot us an email, we are more than happy to talk to you. Thank you for supporting CorkSport.

CorkSport

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Roadracing Around in Mazdaspeed 3’s

Back in 2009 Mazda decided to get the then new 2010 model year Mazdaspeed 3 involved in road racing in the ST class of SCCA Grand Am racing. This pitted the Mazdaspeed 3 up against VW GTIs, Kia Fortes, BMWs, Honda Civics, Porsche Boxers, and even Mazda MX-5s along with a host of others. The variety of vehicles that can compete in this class makes the field of cars immense at these events. In the recent Grand-Am 200 race, 45 different cars were represented.

The bodies of the cars competing have to remain stock in most aspects. Modifications allowed in the ST class are limited to bolt on performance items along with various suspension parts that will hold up to the rigors of road racing and all cars competing get a boost in safety with roll cages, seats, and fire suppression equipment. The tires are one size only for the Mazdaspeed 3, 225/45/17 Continental Extreme Contact Tire.

This year, there are two teams racing the Mazdaspeed 3 in the ST class, I-Moto Racing and Freedom Autosport.

I-Moto Racing has a three car team lead by the team owner Glenn Bochinno and includes past world challenge driver Pierre Kleinubing who used to drive Acuras (welcome to the darkside Pierre). Despite challenges faced due to the Grand Am making a performance adjustment resulting in a boost reduction due to a new “Altitude adjustment”, they have seen their share of successes.

Mark and Matthew Pombo finished 2nd in March at the Mazda Raceway, Laguna Seca and returned to the podium for a 3rd place finish in June after a flawless race at Road America in Elkhart Lake, WI.

Also featuring the Mazdaspeed3 in their stable is Freedom Autosport. After two full seasons in the Grand-Am Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge campaigning Mazda MX-5’s, Freedom Autosport added two Mazdaspeed 3 teams driven by Jason Saini and Nick Igdalsky in one car and Eric Foss and Brad Rampleberg in the other. Brad Rampelberg and Eric Foss gave the team their first podium for the speed3 during the B+ Foundation Heroes 200 at New Jersey Motorsports Park on July 23rd. The third place finish came after the car underwent a complete overhaul in just a week’s time by the Freedom Autosports crew

Mazda looks to have the Manufacturers championship wrapped up with one more event left to go at the Emco Gears Classic at mid-ohio on Sept 16th. The race will be televised on Sep 25th at 12:00 pm EST so be sure to check out the race.

Derrick-

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What’s Going On! CorkSport Development Update

At CorkSport, we are always looking for ways to improve Mazda Performance through the development of new products. We have multiple projects in various stages of development at all times and as one of the lead engineers here, I am kept busy managing the design, implementation and evolution of many of the products introduced into the CorkSport lineup.

Since I started at CorkSport, I have been involved in the testing and final release of some of the new products in the CorkSport line such as the CorkSport Mazdaspeed 3 Lowering Springs and the CorkSport Stub Antenna and I am currently working several projects that we will be releasing over the next few months. Our customers often say that they want to know more about what’s in store for our new product releases and details about how the development process takes place so today I wanted to fill you in on some of the great things going on behind the scenes here at CorkSport.

One of the products I am particularly excited about is the CorkSport Oil Catch Can we are developing for the Mazdaspeed vehicle line. It aims to help filter out the junk that can end up in your intake manifold. One of the main reasons we wanted to develop this product is because the PCV system in the turbo MZR engine has a bad rap and is not known for performing well. Its purpose is to get rid of the particles and gases in the crankcase that get blown by the piston during compression. It helps filter out these particles to keep them from getting mixed in with your oil and from being dumped into the environment. The problem is that these particles get recycled through your engine and recombusted. They also get caked on your intake valves and intake track. In a normal port injected engine this isn’t as big of a deal because the fuel helps wash the deposits away and keep your valves clean. However on a direct injected engine, as found on the Mazdaspeed vehicles, the fuel is injected right into the cylinder and no longer acts as a cleaning agent for the valves so deposits begin to form. The CorkSport Catch Can will filter out the junk that would end up in your intake manifold and possibly on your valves keeping your intake clean. All that is required is that the can emptied with every oil change.

During testing we had the samples removed from the catch can analyzed. The test results shown below reveal just how much junk is entering your engine.

Another pet project I am working on is the development of a FMIC kit that will work seamlessly with the short ram intake on the Mazdaspeed3 and Mazdaspeed6. We have been running the kit on the CorkSport Mazdaspeed3 with great results and have just completed the design of the piping on the Mazdaspeed6 to begin test fitment of that vehicle.

A product that will be entering the lineup in the near future is the CorkSport Rear Sway Bar for the Mazdaspeed 6. We have a test product installed on a customer’s car and it has been performing quite well. Our customer has seen improved handling, faster cornering speeds, and more traction. With the sway bar being a slightly difficult install, I was sure to take lots of pictures during the install in order to provide our customers complete and thorough instructions to make the process a little easier. And of course if a customer runs into difficulty during the install, they can always call us for help.

Most of the products currently under development have originated from product submissions we have received from all of you. If you ever have any ideas for a new product don’t be afraid to submit it. We have a monthly development meeting to evaluate every product submission we receive, so please let us know what you have been wanting for your Mazda!

Andrew-

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CorkSport Product Release! – CorkSport Mazdaspeed 3 Lowering Springs Now Available

CorkSport in pleased to announce the addition of the CorkSport 2007+ Mazdaspeed 3 Lowering Springs to its line of Mazdaspeed 3 products!

CorkSport Lowering Springs

By replacing the stock springs with the CorkSport Lowering Springs, the center of gravity is reduced on the Mazdaspeed 3 providing a quicker turning response and overall crisper road feel. It also has the added benefit of creating less wheel gap which gives the car a performance appearance and edge over the stock springs.

The CorkSport Lowering Springs reduce ride height by approximately 1.2” in the front and 1.0” in the rear resulting in improved handling and a more aggressive stance. The linear spring rate creates a consistent and predicable driving experience, all while maintaining excellent ride quality for your Mazdaspeed 3.

“I really like the way my ride handles with the new sport springs. I have better road feel and increased handling on corners,” said CorkSport customer Illiad Boyce about the new lowering springs, “Even my girlfriend commented on the way the car rode. They are stiff like they should be, but not too stiff to be jarring.”

Crafted from high tensile strength spring steel with an OEM finish to ensure long lasting quality and performance, this lowering spring kit is durable enough to offer quality performance for ages to come and priced at just $209.00 to offer CorkSport customers a cost effective way of improving the handling and look of their Mazdaspeed 3’s.

For more information or to purchase the CorkSport Mazdaspeed 3 Lowering Springs, please visit our product page at https://www.corksport.com/corksport-mazdaspeed-3-lowering-spring-set.html