Tag: MazdaSpeed 3

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MZR Turbo Inlets -Comparing Apples to Apples

There are a lot of factors that go into purchasing any part for your car, and a turbo inlet pipe is no different. With a wide variety of materials and configurations on the market, it can be a difficult decision.

I think the major discerning differences between metal and silicone are that silicone is an insulator, which is why there are claims that the silicone is a) quieter and b) less prone to heat soak. I’m not sure if a) is true to a consequential amount, haven’t done a dB comparison by any means…but I seriously doubt that b) is true either. All materials have thermal properties, all materials transmit thermal mass at different rates. You can deduce all sorts of theories as to how this effects the boost air temps, but I really doubt that there is any discernible power output or boost air temp difference between a silicone, aluminum or stainless inlet pipe from one pull to the next. These vehicles push enough air to fill an office cubicle through that pipe in the span of under a minute. Then they run that air into a turbocharger that superheats the air. It takes 3 degrees of inlet air temperature change to result in one degree of boost air temperature change with a stock intercooler based on thermocouple datalogging that I’ve done on a number of different cars (Speed6’s and 3’s). With air traveling through a tube at insane velocities (like lets say…60 meters per second…or better yet 134 miles per hour), I find it hard to believe that there is any major detriment to having the turbo inlet pipe made of a more thermally conductive material than another.

The reason you buy the pipe is so you get rid of the stock pipe, which sports an oh so stylish, effectively square profile that changes cross sectional area erratically and is made of plastic which is also pretty thermally benign. But that’s not where the power or quickening of spool up happens when you add the inlet -it’s the flow of the air and the smooth transition from the intake to your turbo that you want to optimize. Simple as that.

If it were my car, I’d get one that a) works reliably, b) has quality construction and c) has a reasonable price tag. I can’t point out any on the market that fail a) or b)…all are excellent from what I have seen. Ours is ~$120….because designing and manufacturing any piece of tubing and/or silicone doesn’t cost much. Period. It’s a pipe. Every turbo inlet pipe on the market is a pipe -with three pipes in factory locations connecting into it. A few have factory like brackets that attach to the valvecover, some don’t. Some are aluminum (CorkSport and RPMC), some are stainless (Protege Garage), some are silicone. They all do the same thing.

Our system certainly gives you a few options that you should be familiar with when purchasing . But the first thing to remark on is -our intake includes these parts. If you’re in the market for an intake, this information is of benefit to you, but if you really want a good deal on all of these bits, grab our Power Series Short Ram Intake for your MS3 or MS6 or CX-7.

So back to the configurable differences if you already own an intake and want to get a turbo inlet pipe to match. Our turbo inlet pipes have a few toggles: Valvecover breather (yes/no) and Recirculation Valve Port (yes/no). The valvecover breather is almost completely unnecessary if you have an aftermarket intake that is not made by us -as most intakes include this provision in the CAI pipe or the coupler. So that’s almost always going to be a ‘no’ unless there’s some other reason why you want an external intake vacuum source to plug into (catch can, etc). The other is the recirculation valve. If you have chosen to do a strictly vent to atmosphere configuration on your bypass valve (not necessarily recommended), you can choose this option and clean up your engine bay a bit.

The final dial on these is the silicone color – for the silicone coupler between the turbo and inlet pipe, as well as the valvecover breather and boost control solenoid lines. These are available in Red, Blue and Black. Finally, in the near future we will be offering one or more powdercoating options starting with black.

Any questions, leave us a comment or shoot me an email.

– Jason

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An Intake for Every Engine

It has become evident to us that a number of our customers want more ability to configure the color schemes and finish options on their intakes to match the look of their car or their personality.

Because of this, we have investigated the feasibility of making all of our intakes fully color and finish configurable and are planning a staged product rollout to facilitate this. A product rollout complete with actual hard dates that you can rely on.

Stage I: Black Silicone & Filter and Full Configurability.
December 14, 2009

So starting…well…now, we have begun this transition with the rollout of black silicone couplers and charcoal-colored dry flow air filters on our Mazda3, Mazdaspeed3, Mazdaspeed6, Mazda 6, CX-7, CX-30, and CX-50 intakes. This brings us to three silicone colors (red, blue, black) for the Turbocharged MZR 2.3 DISI engines and two silicone colors (blue, black) on the MZR 2.0 and 2.5 Naturally Aspirated engines for the 2010+ model year.

Another option included in the first stage release of our fully configurable intake system is full configurability of your intake on our website. If you want black silicone, black MAF Housing and blue filter, you can choose that. If you want a red filter and a blue silicone, go right ahead. We’ll build it on the fly. We have gone through a number of lean manufacturing steps that will allow us to be agile and build our kit contents on the fly and retain our same day shipping capability for all stocked color capabilities.

Stage II: Color Anodized MAF Housings.
February 10, 2010

In this stage we will be offering three additional MAF Housing colors (most likely Blue, Red, Gold) and two powder coat colors of turbo inlet pipe, which will be determined by your requests and polls on a number of popular Mazda enthusiast forums. Due to smaller batch quantities on the anodizing and additional process steps, we’ll be offering these colors at a small premium.

Again, we will still allow you full reconfigurability to an extremely granular level -if you want a Blue Filter, Gold MAF, Black Silicone and Black Powdercoated Turbo Inlet Pipe, we’ll do it. Seriously, if you want a Red Filter, Gold MAF, Blue Silicone and Black Turbo Inlet Pipe, we’ll do that too. And just like we have provided now, photos of these combinations will pop up as you configure them on our website.

Stage III: Full Custom Anodizing / Powder Coating and more.
March 15, 2010

First off we’ll be offering powder-coated turbo inlet pipes starting with a gloss black and working into a number of other color coating options.

Additionally, this stage will allow you to fully customize anodize your MAF Housing in as many colors as we have access to. If you want a full blacked out intake with an emerald green, dark purple or titanium bronze anodized MAF Housing, we’ll get it for you (again at a reasonable premium depending on interest and volume). We’ll do our best to do small runs and keep what we can on the shelves based on polls and interest. Have a specific powder coating color? We can make it happen. We may also start anodizing inlet pipes (we’ll be switching 4043 to 5356 TIG filler rod for perfect anodizing results if we go that route).

Here’s an example of some of the anodizing colors we’ll have available:

We will also be evaluating silicone colors at this point -because we know some of you are dying for that Kawasaki Green Silicone with Purple MAF Housing to go along with your Bosozoku exhaust, zero offset wheels and stretched tires. Or maybe you just want a clean, all white intake to go along with your CWP Mazdaspeed 3. Honestly, we’ll have to hear from you on which direction to go, but I’m guessing white will be in demand.

There’s more…but if we told you, we’d have to kill you. We’re still aiming to keep this under wraps to some extent as we’ve got some really unique options on the table that we’re still getting samples of. As soon as our samples are in, we’ll be polling for interest and standard style options.

We’re doing as much as we can to provide the exact products you want, configured to your style and taste. To do so, we’re having to stretch our manufacturing agility and call on all of our resources through local machine shops and manufacturers to keep small batch parts on the shelves in a wide variety of options.

Again, tell us what YOU want to see on your car. Have a wild combination that you absolutely MUST HAVE for your car and willing to wait for it? We’ll be putting together a handful of case studies showing some of the more creative combinations for the roll out of the future options on these products.

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Staged Dyno Results for 2010 MazdaSpeed3

We have received a lot of questions regarding the dyno numbers for our products for the 2010 Speed3. So far we’ve only released a Stock vs. (Intake+RacePipe) dyno sheet, and I figured it was time to add some clarity to the questions and comments in a centralized location instead of replying on specific forums and leaving other people in the dark. In the end, our Intake + Racepipe + Downpipe give customers the ability to crank out 51 more horsepower for $687. The key to getting the most out of your car isn’t just to make ample power increases, but to have money left in your wallet to add more options sooner. CorkSport has you covered at a cost of $13.74/hp with a peak gain of 51 Wheel Horsepower and 47 Ft Lb of Torque.

The 2010 Speed3 has a lot of power left on the table, and our product development has really brought that to light. Unfortunately, we stage build everything -starting with an Intake, adding a RacePipe, then the DownPipe…and Dyno and labor hours add cost to parts, so we try our best to get the data we need to validate our products without adding a lot of cost to the parts based on a variety of test iterations and combinations. This blog post details the results of the staged build on our 2010 Speed3. In addition, it makes some details clear about comparing our systems to other options on the market -what’s included in intake and downpipe packages to provide detail to costs vs. gains.

Stock vs. Power Series Intake System
Our $239 intake system includes our aluminum turbo inlet pipe, billet MAF housing and CorkSport Dry Flow Air Filter. Again, this package includes the turbo inlet pipe -it is the only system on the market that is packaged including the inlet pipe -all others are marketed separately. The torque gains were nearly 20ft lbs increase on average. We also saw large sections of torque gain that were up to 33ft lbs of torque. The horsepower gains were equally impressive with the largest differential being a 36whp gain over the stock numbers. Our system works great, we have put a lot of time into the design and validation testing of it and it generates some serious power…at $6.63 per horse at the wheels.

Racepipes and Downpipes…*
The CorkSport TurboBack Exhaust packages are broken into three components: The Downpipe which evacuates exhaust gasses from the turbocharger into the main exhaust system; The Racepipe (available with or without high flow catalytic converter) which replaces the factory secondary restrictive catalytic converter; The CatBack Exhaust System which is comprised of the primary 80mm (3.15″) exhaust pipe and resonators and the dual 80mm tailpipe section. The main component to discuss is the comparison of the CorkSport Downpipe and Racepipe to other Downpipes on the market. A few other Downpipes cost substantially more -due partially to the fact that they include what we sell as a Racepipe. Despite our separate packaging, our pricing is still competitive at $448 for the combined package, and allow our customers to swap in the wide open 80mm Racepipe on track days and retain their factory catalytic converters or choose the Racepipe which features a high flow spun metallic catalytic converter (an additional $200). Whether you choose the Downpipe/Racepipe combination with or without a high flow catalyst, you’ll find our prices aggressively competitive.

Stock vs. Power Series Intake System + Power Series Stock Fitment Racepipe
This stage adds the Power Series RacePipe to the 2010 Speed3 w/ CorkSport Short Ram Intake & Turbo Inlet Pipe. Power goes up nicely to a combined gain of 41whp and 33ft lb of torque at peak and a blistering 50ft lb of torque at 3000rpm. Where the intake alone dropped low end (1600-2900RPM) torque by a few pound feet relative to stock, the addition of the racepipe puts the entire torque curve higher than that of the stock setup. If you’re running a rally car or just want blistering torque -this is your prime combination.

Stock vs. CorkSport Intake + Racepipe + Downpipe
This stage adds the Power Series Downpipe from CorkSport to the 2010 Speed3 w/ Short Ram Intake & Turbo Inlet Pipe. The CorkSport downpipe features a divorced wastegate dump design -providing a separate outlet for wastegate gasses and avoiding disruption of the primary exhaust pathway when the wastegate cracks open to bypass excess exhaust pressure past the turbine wheel. Adding the downpipe to the previously detailed combination of intake and racepipe, power jumps another 10 horse at the cost of a little bit of peak torque, but the low end of the torque curve increases nicely. As a combined package, the CorkSport Intake, Racepipe and Downpipe put down 51 horsepower and 47 pound feet of torque at the wheels. Watch for the release of our downpipe for the 2010 Speed3 in the coming weeks.

– Jason

* Consult with your local governing body regarding the legality of removal of a factory catalytic converter, whether it is for track or for street use and whether you are using the full race open pipe or a high flow catalyst. High Flow Performance Catalystsare ILLEGAL in the State of California, and will NOT be sold into California.

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CorkSport Dyno Day

Last Saturday at our CorkSport Swap Meet, we had a great turnout for the Dyno Testing. With 16 people signing up ahead of time and 5 signing up on site, we got some great runs in from a diverse group of participants. We even felt sorry for a handful of non-Mazdas and let them participate as well!

DYNODAY
High horsepower of the day was Jason O’Neill with his ’01 Miata. Jay’s car made 393hp to the rear wheels with a brutal 368 ft lb of torque. A week earlier he had the motor out to diagnose some issues with the variable valve timing as well as try to get the head into the shop for new valve guides and seals and couldn’t make it in time so he threw it back in just to drive down to the event on a set of beefy drag radials. Later in the evening he ran an 11.51 at 124mph out at Portland International Raceway. Brutal. I’ll say this much, when a lightweight little Miata pushing 400+hp (it was uncharacteristically chilly out Saturday night) on a cold track makes a 1.6 second reaction time, it’s driver has had some practice. Hats off to Jay for his awesome car and sticky launch skills.

Close behind was an LS2 powered FD RX-7 that was unbelievably clean. The install was gorgeous, with little over 1000 miles on the clock since the swap, and the powerband was equally beautiful. Dropping an Earth shaking 300ft lb of torque at 1600RPM and following that up with a 45 degree horsepower curve topping out at 376hp, this car would be more adrenaline pumping fun than a barrel of monkeys in an AK-47 factory. And the owner’s passion for Mazdas goes way back…he bought an FD off the lot new in ’93 as well. While purists will wince at the addition of Chevy Power to one of the crown jewels of Mazda’s Rotary history, I would guess anyone who saw the meticulous install and the owners passion for making this an all around amazing car would give it a thumbs up. The drivetrain wasn’t the only amazing thing about the car – the suspension and bodywork were phenomenal as well.

We had a pair of Speed3’s and a Speed6 on the dyno as well, with high HP numbers in the high 260’s and high torque numbers in the high 290’s. The dyno runs on these cars are all over the map, preferencing torque on one run, horsepower on the next. One car ran 257HP w/ 296ft lb followed by a run of 269HP w/ 282ft lb. And I always thought the less the driver could effect the run the more consistent the output would be – not so with the MZR 2.3 DISI powered sedans.

The rest of the pool consisted of two FS Powered Mazdaspeed Protégés, a BP Turbo Powered Protégé, Four Miata’s and two eardrum scalding FB RX-7’s that both gave the LS2 a run for its money for smoothest powerband.

All in all it was a great day, and we had some good opportunities to talk shop and discuss opportunities for more power. The Seattle area group from MazdasNW.com came down and were able to meet up with more of the folks on the forum who are from the Portland Area. All in all, it became clear that a lot of these Mazda enthusiasts are hungry for opportunities to spend time discussing their wrenching projects and spending time with like-minded people. I look forward to future opportunities like this. Thanks again for everyone who came out to the event…without such great participation, none of us would have had as much fun as we did.

P.S. If you have video of your car on our Dyno during the CorkSport Dyno Day and it’s not included in the above video playlist, fire over a copy for me and we’ll add it! Sorry for not getting all of the cars on video, I had a few different hats I was wearing and wasn’t able to get them all.

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CorkSport September 2009 Swap Meet and Dyno Day

We had our swap meet and dyno day on Saturday the 19th. The weather for the day was pretty ominous with rain forecasted from early morning to around noon and it was right on. At 6am the rain started up but that didn’t stop us from getting the event going.


10am with the rain coming down


Alan Webb Mazda showed up at the event early and brought along some parts to sell at a discount and a new 2010 Mazdaspeed 3 to show off. We had the swap meet spaces in doors to keep people dry during the entire day. There were lots of good deals to be had at the event that we offered and other people brought as well.


People checking out the deals (including the sweet RE-Amemiya MS3 hood)


We had almost the entire Mazda range of models represented at the event. All models of Rx7s, Rx8s, Mazda Proteges (new and older models), Miatas, Mazda 6s, and Mazda 3s.


Scott’s FC with the drift damage can be seen at the right (Scott too)


The dyno event had 20 cars on run on it during the day. The best power made was a NB Miata with a GT3076R turbocharger at 400 wheel hp. The car is very un-assuming until the driver hits the throttle.


The biggest dyno number of the day went to the red Miata above.


The day even had a few surprises in it too. The 1st gen Rx7 after its dyno run drove around the parking lot and the tie rod end broke. After a quick assessment and help from CorkSport the tie rod end was repaired and the car was back on 4 wheels. Thankfully it happened in our parking lot and not on his drive home.


Oh Snap!


Thank you to everyone for coming out and making the event despite the not so pleasant weather early in the day. I would like to mention a special thanks to Alan Webb Mazda for braving the weather and to MazdasNW group for driving down from the Seattle area.

– Derrick