With the news that has come out in the past few weeks about the next Mazdaspeed 3 and it being AWD. Takeo Mariuchi, the program deputy manager was quoted as saying “from a technical point of view it’s not difficult to install a four wheel drive system” for the next version. I took this as a non-committal response from Takeo to answer someone’s question. But in the interest of wanting to see a AWD Mazdaspeed 3 myself, I decided to take a look at the CorkSport 2014 Mazda 3 when it was up on a lift this week.
Checking out the rear knuckles you can see they are open in the middle which would make adapting rear axles to be pretty straight forward.
I took a peak at the rear suspension of the CorkSport Cx5 as well and it is setup the same. The next point which would have to be addressed is space for the driveshaft and transfer case for an AWD system.
Sure enough there is a larger amount of space at the back of the engine bay to clear a transfer case and drive shaft. The exhaust manifold looks to be the same from the CX5 AWD to give the clearance for needed systems.
In my opinion, the only thing standing in the way of this getting the green light is the bean counters looking at the past sales of AWD performance cars for Mazda. In North America, the 323GTX didn’t sell too well and the 06-07 Mazdaspeed 6 was not the biggest sales success either. Let’s hope they overlook those and give us enthusiasts the car we have always wanted.
-Derrick
Will There Be a New Mazdaspeed 3??? With All Wheel Drive??? September 27th, 2023CorkSport
With our fuel pump design complete (link to fuel pump blogs 1,2,3,4), we now turned our attention to the details. We wanted a coating to protect the piston and decrease friction during operation. After testing dozens of compounds, we settled on a very strong coating that is applied with a proprietary process. This process allows for an exceptional bond with the metal, lower static friction, and increases the surface hardness. Before applying the coating however, we wanted to make sure we had the best part possible underneath it. Imagine having an orange that is covered in titanium. The surface might be incredibly hard, but with no substance to back that up you will eventually lose the shape.
After choosing a very strong alloy for our internals, we then machine their tolerances to an incredible 6 microns! To make sure the tolerances are paired for life, we serialize the parts to prevent any issues and to track the life of the pumps. We then surface treat the pumps to achieve the alloys maximum strength; only after the maximum hardness is achieved do we apply our surface treatments to bring the overall durability to an even higher level.
Many companies would be finished at this point but, at CorkSport, our research has shown us that when a coating is applied it is very difficult to maintain a smooth surface. In fact, we found that the coating has many microscopic hills and valleys. There would be no reason for us to go through all the work of having incredible tolerances if we were just going to ruin them with an uneven coating. In order to correct this, the pistons are then re-machined back to their original single micron tolerance. The CorkSport Fuel Pump Internals are the lightest aftermarket kit on the market for faster response and decreased cam wear. At this point it may seem like we are flying this pump to Mars but we just wanted to make the best part on the market, and it worked.
Pump More Than Any Other Kit Available
All of this adds up to an improved pumping volume that is over 8% higher than all other pumps we tested and 50% larger capacity than the stock pump. When other pumps are losing efficiency because of their design or tolerances, ours is just hitting its stride. That difference in the real world is going to be higher HP numbers, safer air/fuel ratios and the ability to go that much further without worrying about your fuel supply.
Because of the increase in fuel we highly recommend that you get a new tune for your car we have made a combo deal to save some money here.
How to Buy the Best Fuel Pump Internals
Now that the cat is out of the bag we can let you know a few more things.
Our first batch is very limited and we want to give everyone that has been waiting a fair shot at getting one. We will release these parts for Pre-Order on November 1st. The Pre-Order will be limited to the first 100 paid orders or November 14th, whichever comes first.
The CorkSport High Pressure Fuel Pump internals include a collectable aluminum box with:
Full color instructions
Stainless Steel Installation Tool (That also doubles as a keychain bottle opener!)
Anodized Aluminum Installation Sleeve
CorkSport USB drive with Installation Video, Promotional Video and Other Bonus Material
The Pre-Order will go live on November 1st at 12am Pacific Standard Time and will remain up until the initial 100 orders have been placed. Unfortunately these are the only internals we will offer for 2013 so if you miss the pre-order you will have to wait until next year to get the best fuel pump upgrade on the market.
The Fuel Pump Finale… (Sort Of) January 4th, 2020CorkSport
We know by now that adding power to your Mazda is fairly straightforward up to a certain point. However, sooner or later, that hunger for power means you’re going to need to step up to a new fuel pump that can flow more fuel. By seeing that most of the fuel pumps on the market were largely the same, we decided to see what kind of innovations we could bring to the table. At this point we had learned volumes about the pumps on the market through our research and decided to engineer a new set of pump internals that focused on everything that we had learned.
We know this is possibly the worst kept secret since Area 51, but we started engineering fuel pump internals over 2 years ago and we aim to show you why ours is worth the wait.
We didn’t just set out to make another pump; the market has plenty of those. We set out to make the best Mazda fuel pump upgrade on the market specifically for Mazdas from a company that ONLY makes parts for Mazdas.
We started by researching many different technologies and engineering ideas in the pressure ranges experienced in these fuel pumps. We purchased every kit on the market and a brand new replacement from Mazda to test. The results from some of those tests can be found here (Link to blogs 1,2, and 3). After agreeing that 9.8mm was the maximum size we could attempt for the piston without making the sleeve wall too thin, we could start engineering the rest of the part.
We then built all the internals available in SolidWorks and tested the efficiency of them all for flow design and volume. This was merely the beginning of our design phase but helped us realize many great ideas (as well as a few not so great ones). We ended up with a design unlike any other on the market that, according to the data, would be more efficient than anything on the market.
With the increase in flow and efficiency we knew that our design could also benefit from a stiffer spring rate for the pump. That would enable higher RPM’s and improved cam wear over the life of the pump. Since we would be flowing more, the pressure on the pump would be greater than ever, the stiffer spring was just good insurance to get the power we needed even past the stock redline.
During our testing we also discovered the keeper assembly used by the factory is no accident. Many of the other pumps on the market use a keeper system similar to an intake or exhaust valve. This style does a fantastic job of locking the piston in place, but creates a few issues of its own. Because of the flow of fuel, the piston rides one side of the sleeve more than the other; over time, this will wear more into the piston which will affect clearances and efficiency. To prevent this, the factory style keeper allows the piston to spin as the spring moves up and down. That led us to choose the factory style retainer. We didn’t want to guess on either design without proof of our theory so we produced samples of both styles to prove wear differences and address installation challenges related to both styles.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, we’ll have just one more fuel pump blog next week with a very exciting limited offer. Stay tuned as CorkSport is about to take Mazda performance one step higher!
Fuel Pump Comparison Part 4 (Bombs Away!) February 28th, 2018CorkSport
You may remember that we had to get a new shop testing vehicle after our last Mazdaspeed 3’s untimely demise See here; but what you may not know is how much time and effort was put into that car. Building a rolling showcase isn’t easy, cheap or quick. We were sad to see it go but now have a brand new canvas to start over on.
With our new speed we decided to go white, with that pearly white paint job we wanted to go towards a “panda” style going forward, mixing white and black parts in our build. We have started with a few small black and white things (intake, BOV, etc.). We’re really looking for input from you to really make this car unforgettable.
We’re looking at every detail to try to make an overall car that hasn’t been seen before that goes deeper than just bolting things on. We want to try new things, make combinations that have never been seen before and really try to make something that you would want if you never had to make a compromise.
Check us out on Facebook and let us know what you think we should add to this car to make it really unique.
Help Build the Mazdaspeed of Your Dreams July 16th, 2013CorkSport
Welcome back to the Fuel Pump Comparison, Part 3. If you haven’t been following along with us feel free to read Part 1 and Part 2.
Now that we have a good understanding of the basics for these high pressure fuel pumps we can start to really dig deeper into the specifications. One of the items we were really curious about were the materials used in the construction of these pumps. We decided to have the hardness tested and ascertain the materials used. The factory pump internals do not use any coating, the hardness test showed us that the internals went through a hardening process as the core was significantly softer than the surface. Because of these hardness requirements, many other aftermarket internals use a coating of some sort to decrease friction between the piston and the sleeve. As for what the stock internals are made from, we answered that. Except for the hardening procedure, according to their chemical breakdown, they match a common die steel, so nothing too fancy.
We now understand why it is so common to hear that the factory pumps are machined to such tight tolerances. At high rates of speed and pressure with a hardened material, you could easily have failures if tolerances were not correct.
When testing the fuel pumps on the dyno, we chose a Mazdaspeed 3 (2nd gen) with bolt-ons and a stock turbo. The factory boost levels we maintained 1700psi all the way to redline with no issues. As soon as we raised the boost slightly, the fuel pump began to drop pressure. With a Cobb AccessPort and a stage 2 reflash, the pressure of the pump would drop under 1000psi by 5000rpms. If you’re going to turn up the boost or run a reflash, an upgraded fuel pump is a must.
Our dyno is able to adjust load, so in our testing we chose a load value typical of 4th gear on the street and tested all pumps with the same load on the same day, only hours apart from each other. All the pumps tested performed very similar for power but the stock pump actually ran a lower air/fuel ratio. This is because all of the pumps were tested with no tune. When we changed to the Cobb stage 2 map, the power levels increased but we could not complete the test with the stock pump as it just could not keep up with the demand. With the stage 2 tune, we found the air/fuel ratios to be very, very rich and had a very real possibility for causing high load misfires. We actually experienced that several times on colder days. With no tune, this does not happen but the car did still run very rich in boost with all the aftermarket fuel pumps. With a custom tune though, there should be no difference between the pumps and you can raise the boost without worry of running low on pressure.
Now that you have read Part 3, see Part 1 and Part 2.
Stay tuned for part 4 in our fuel pump comparison series, things are about to really heat up!!!
Fuel Pump Comparison Part 3 February 28th, 2018CorkSport
