Tag: R&D

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What is Mazda Up to?

I looked up the vehicle market share to see how Mazda did in the US over the last year. I was surprised to find that Mazda only accounts for 2% of the market. I have known Mazda is a smaller player in the market but I didn’t realize it was that small. If you look at what Mazda brings to the table you realize they do very well with what they sell. Looking at the product lines, Mazda has a vehicle in most of the segments like compact, mid size, sports car, etc. which is an accomplishment for a smaller manufacturer.

Mazda has great enthusiast support for their vehicles as well. Mazda advertises that more of their models are out racing on any weekend than any other manufacturer, and Mazda is only a 2% percent market share. They also brought us the Miata, the best selling sports car of all time, with over 890,000 sold to date! It does make you wonder what those other manufacturers are doing with their time. This also means we at CorkSport, like you, chose Mazda over some other brand based on the cars being fun to drive.

A strong component of the fun to drive crowd is the demographic of a Mazda owner. The mean age of Mazda owners is 42 years old. Only Scion has a younger average owner age, and they are a brand marketed directly to younger buyers.

There has been some news circulating about Mazda not being able to build new platforms since Ford and Mazda are not longer going to share resources. I don’t think this will be a problem for Mazda. There has been some shared chassis between Mazda and Ford in the past but Mazda has often developed their own platforms to build cars on. They have the engineering capabilities to do so in the future as well.

Mazda has just recently raised a huge amount of capital to fund its engine research for their new SKY engine series, and other projects which are not going to be shared with Ford. Mazda announced they want to increase the fuel economy by 30% in the upcoming years. Expect to see more direct injected motors in the future from Mazda to meet that goal. I am really hoping we get the direct injected diesel engines in the upcoming Mazda 2. The engine gets incredible fuel economy and meets ULEV (Ultra Low) emissions requirements for Europe.


Mazda SKY Engine

Mazda is not the biggest manufacturer of cars and probably never will be, but we can count on them to keep producing great vehicles for us to drive. With the visible plans Mazda has set out I expect to see some great products in the future.

– Derrick

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2010 MazdaSpeed 3 Downpipe Update

We have had some interesting times with the development of our downpipe for the 2010 Mazdaspeed3. Downpipes on the 1st Gen MS3 have historically been a bit of a puzzle to work around the dynamics of the factory computer’s expectations for what should be seen at the two oxygen sensors on the upstream and downstream side of the factory catalyst. From our research, customer feedback and experience, our designs are able to avoid throwing a check engine light on first generation DISI equipped vehicles. Other manufacturers of downpipes are hit and miss depending on the manufacturer, with some throwing the occasional random CEL for slow response time and others being more pervasive.

The 2010 model is more finicky. Initially, we faced some check engine lights resulting from the vehicle not seeing what it expected at the secondary oxygen sensor, but we made some adjustments to the O2 sensor and have thus far run our test car for ~30 warmup cycles without any sign of a CEL. The 2010 Mazdaspeed3 runs a different algorithm than the 2007-2009 models and this results in a little less tolerance to radical changes in downpipe design.

That being said, the codes we initially were getting were based on a slow response time of the O2 sensor -a code that one of our local customers was getting on his bone stock 2010. We have had our downpipe on the car for nearly three months now. We’re proceeding with caution and planning on getting a handful of downpipes out into the public on a limited release to test the waters and ensure that the design will be free of any CEL activity for all of our customers and not just the single test case of our shop 2010.

If you’ve been chomping at the bit to get ahold of our downpipe, drop Derrick an email or call us at 360-260-2675 and we’ll get one out to you. We would also be very interested in getting one of these out to someone in our local area with an otherwise stock vehicle so that we can do some before/after dyno testing. We’ve done the staged dyno on our 2010, now we’d like to do a run with the downpipe to see how well it performs on its own.

– Jason

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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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Goodbye 323 GTX

Goodbye 323 GTX. Goodbye Cusco, GT Spec, Pedders, Autometer, Injen, Knightsports, KVR, RE-Amemiya, Mazdaspeed, and about 50 other product lines.

You may have noticed a recent news post announcing we are phasing out Mazda 323 GTX Parts. The 1988-89 GTX (in USA) was a great car for its time. Many owners have maintained and upgraded their cars to the point they are more powerful and better handling than some of the newest cars. A remarkable testament to the car considering it is over 20 years old!

Unfortunately, there just aren’t enough of them left on the road to justify further development and support. Sales have steadily declined for this car for many years. Ultimately, I think the recession was the last straw for us. Very limited inventory remains and we plan to remove this car from our catalog by the end of the year. To answer the most common question we’ve received since the official announcement last week: “Yes, a few parts will likely end up in our clearance sale”. To reflect on the most common comment we’ve received so far, “You Suck”; it is regrettable, truly. We don’t like it either, but it was ultimately our customers that made the decision for us.

We are also phasing out many product lines, as I mentioned earlier. Border, RE-Amemiya, Mazdaspeed, Knightsports, and FEED are venerable Japanese brands. They have always been slow movers for us, have long lead times for our customers, and sales volumes don’t support keeping parts in inventory. Japanese quality is exceptional, truly, and if you have the taste (and wallet) for these parts we are confident you’ll find a way to get them.

Brands like Injen, Centerforce, KVR, NGK, Unichip, Koyo, and Greddy have many products that are redundant to our own catalog. We are committed to making CorkSport parts the best value on the market but we don’t make everything. We’ve selected a few partners to fill out our product line. The remainders are being dropped from our catalog.

We’ll be launching a new approach to business early next year that builds upon our reputation for high quality parts at an excellent value and supported by the best customer service in the industry. This plan requires a commitment we cannot maintain while serving sales of other brand names. When you think “CS” will you think ‘customer service’ (pardon the lame humor)? We hope so.

There are no gimmicks here. We don’t trademark some odd spelling of a performance sounding words to trick you into believing your getting technology that is different from everything else out there. You are smart enough to recognize that sort of marketing. We could try gimmicks like free shipping but that means we inflate our prices to cover the cost (and thus it is not free to you) or we erode profits and have less opportunity to use them to serve you better. Better to know what you are paying for in my opinion.

Our goal is value. Price, quality, support before/during/after the sale, shipping, packaging, and warranty all go into the value equation. We are focusing our product line in order to offer better value to our customers through improved customer service and support.

Please send us your feedback. We promise to read and consider all of it.

– Rich