I am writing this exciting blog because the Mazda SkyActiv-G is getting some CorkSport TURBO LOVE.
Quick note, this kit is releasing in April 2022, take a look at the several videos #1#2#3 we have posted up on the kit.
Since 2013 and the loss of the Mazdaspeed 3, Mazda has really left a lot to be desired as far as power goes for its line-up. Don’t get me wrong, we love Mazda here at CorkSport; the interiors and exteriors are on point, they get great gas mileage, and are exciting to drive. We will always continue pushing and developing the platform that Mazda is kicking out, but let’s be real…we love power too much to let this one slide.
I’ll admit, we thought long and hard about moving forward with such a large turbo kit for the Mazda 3 and 6. We hoped, we wished, and we dreamed that Mazda would eventually wise up and kick out a GEN3 Mazdaspeed, and we got really excited when we heard about the CX-9 Turbocharged 2.5L engine. Unfortunately, Mazda chose not to go down that path. Once we found out for sure, we decided it was time to pull the trigger on the GEN3 Mazda 3 & 6 Turbo Kit.
Moving forward on a project of this size was not a trivial decision. There were many aspects to consider:
Do we make a complete kit or just design and manufacture difficult components?
What is the right power level to shoot for?
How will the engine and drivetrain hold up to the increased stress of forced induction?
How do we properly tune the engine?
These are all important aspects we had to consider.
The Choices We Made
The most difficult and time-intensive aspect of the kit is designing the physical components that will make up the kit… the entire kit. And yes, we decided that a 100% complete kit was the only way to make this a great setup, so that exactly what we intend to provide.
A complete kit needs to include everything from the air filter to the downpipe, and everything in-between. This includes the intake system, turbocharger, intercooler piping, intercooler, exhaust manifold, downpipe, and all the necessary silicone couplers, hardware, and wiring extensions.
This will be the most complete turbo kit you can purchase for the 2.5L SkyActiv-G powertrain.
CAD Designed Turbo Kit Mock-Up
Right behind developing all the components for the kit comes the tuning. We are working with Versatune to develop the software to control the 2.5L Sky-G engine with forced induction. This portion of the project will be kicked into high gear in the near future once all functional prototypes are on our test car and strapped to the dyno.
The Things We Don’t Know
We’ve got a long way to go with this project, and there are still some uncertainties we will have to address when we get there. We will need to find out if the engine can take the added power, and how much until it goes zoom-zoom-boom!
Time will tell on these questions, but we do have some stuff in the works that will help. While I’m just spit-balling here, something around 280-300whp would be a lot of fun in the Mazda 3 and Mazda 6. Make sure to stay tuned as this project evolves through testing and development in the coming months. I have only skimmed the surface of this project and I could easily write pages and pages if time allowed.
What are your thoughts on this new project? Questions? Leave them in the comments section, we would love to hear from you.
-Barett @ CS
Turbo Kit in Development for 2014+ Mazda 3 & 2013+ Mazda 6 April 1st, 2022CorkSport
Guys, we want your feedback on a project we’ve been working on for the past year.
We’ve shown glimpses of our Mazdaspeed intake manifold from time to time, including the one below when we had it installed on Barett’s Mazdaspeed 3, which popped up on our Facebook page—on April Fool’s—while it was being tested.
This manifold is designed to be a bolt-in. It’ll work with the stock throttle body, stock intercooler, stock you-name-it. This means if you’ve upgraded to a front mount intercooler, it’ll also work as it keeps the OEM throttle body location.
We’ve been through a few iterations of the intake manifold, and below is a picture of the latest version. We’ve changed several things in the design from the last test version, including individual ports for the runners to install meth injection.
We also had a peak increase in power of 17 horsepower at the wheels on the 1st gen Mazdaspeed 3 in back to back testing with the manifold.
So. This is where you the Mazdaspeed owner comes into play. We want to know: Would you buy this if we made it? Tell us your thoughts, and if you are interested, shoot us an email so we can keep you updated.
We have gotten some great response back from our customers who have the SkyActiv Mazda 3, 6, and CX-5s over the past few years with product suggestions and questions about power, technology, and more.
We decided to have an in-house example of Mazda’s current sport model of the Mazda 3, a 2015 2.5 liter SkyActiv manual transmission. As everyone’s favorite television series host has put it in the past: There is no better way to test the breed than motorsports. So that is exactly what we are going to do with this brand new Mazda 3. Strip the interior, outfit it with CorkSport parts, install some safety gear, and go racing.
Yes. We are really going to take apart a perfectly good car to race on the track with a bunch of other people who suffer from the same mental disorder. We will be posting regular updates on the car as we proceed through the build, which will include time on our dyno and results on the races.
This also means there will be a garage sale on brand new parts from this car, interior, wheels, etc. It has every option so if you want something shoot us an email.
At CorkSport, we can’t wait for the new 2016 MX-5.
We pre-ordered ours as soon as the sale went live, and we’ve been planning new Miata parts and upgrades since we first heard about the launch. The actual R&D has to wait until we have the MX-5 in our garage, but that hasn’t hampered our excitement—especially when we read the reviews of the lucky first drivers, who all love the car’s new updates.
This little roadster has been turning heads since it first hit the roads. During a recent balance test, Dave Coleman, the Miata Product Manager, said, “The Miata really is the most pure, elemental, simple, straightforward sports car you can get.” Whether you own one or not, it’s hard to disagree that the MX-5 is a beautiful piece of engineering. Just about every Miata model looks pretty and effortless—but at CorkSport we always want to know: How does it fare on the road? (Or better yet, at the track?)
We love speed, power, and handling at CorkSport, and most our products are designed to give your Mazda the most boost and control possible. From all of its initial reviews, it sounds like the new MX-5 engineers had similar aspirations, and from the videos we’ve seen, it looks like they succeeded.
Mazda UK just released a test drive video, showing how the new 2016 MX-5 compares to the original 1990 MkI. Given how much has changed in engine technology over the past 25 years, they gave the original a nice 4-second head start, just to make things fair. The result reveals the beauty of both designs—and promises viewers that the new Miata will be just as fun (and great) to drive as the first one.
If that doesn’t make you want to hit the track in a Miata, nothing will. We can’t wait to do tests of our own, so stay tuned.
Cheers,
CorkSport
How Fast Is the 2016 MX-5? June 18th, 2015CorkSport
Have you heard about FSAE? You Haven’t? Well, grab a beer and take a seat. We have quite the journey ahead of us.
The Basics
Formula SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) is an international collegiate design competition held among colleges and their associated student groups. The project is to design and build an open-wheel race car (within the specified rules) to compete in both dynamic and static events.
The dynamic events include:
A 300ft drag race
Left/right skid pad
Single pass autocross track
A closed loop autocross track run for 20 minutes, which is also scored on fuel economy.
The static events include:
An engineering design event
A cost analysis event
A marketing presentation.
The goal of the project is to simulate a new startup company that designs and builds track day cars that are affordable for the average guy. All right. That’s the background. Now, I hope you enjoy my personal FSAE journey.
First Encounters with FSAE
For me, it all started in September of 2011. I had just transferred to Portland State University (PSU) to begin my upper division classes in Mechanical Engineering. The classes were difficult, and I didn’t know anyone at Portland State. One day, I came across the PSU Viking Motorsport Formula SAE student group. I was instantly hooked, getting whatever information I could from the couple of members I met. Before I knew it I was in the student group’s lab, tinkering with the car and asking way too many questions. I had no idea what I was getting myself into at the time, and I’ll admit: I’m glad I didn’t because I don’t know if I would have stuck it out any other way.
I attended a second meeting with enthusiasm, which landed me managing the cooling system for the next race car. A mixture of stress and excitement overwhelmed me.
Building an FSAE Race Car
You only have a year with FSAE, which means we had to work quickly. Within a few weeks the 2012 race car was beginning to take shape.
Remember: This wasn’t built from a kit. From concept to 3D computer model to the immense amount of fabrication, we did it all. Not to mention the 12-21 credits of engineering classes, and on top of it all some of us were working an hourly job—myself included. Sounds crazy, huh? You have no idea unless you’ve done it.
With a goal to have an operational race car by mid-February there were at least eight members spending 60-80 hours per week building the race car. There were many late nights—actually, “early mornings” are a better way to put it—that ended like this:
But with every tough time there was a moment like this to remind us to have fun:
The Fruit of Our Labor
By March, only a couple weeks behind schedule, we had an operational race car, and we were feeling pretty awesome (to have an operational race car by then was impressive in this competition) and ready to start testing and tuning. With so much time spent in the machine shop and lab, we were all very excited to get some fresh air at the test track. Who wouldn’t be excited with a view like this?
Our testing and tuning consisted of every aspect of vehicle dynamics. Tire pressure, camber, caster, anti-squat, anti-lift, toe, spring rate, and damping rate adjustment—not to mention the live engine tuning via wireless connection. Testing and tuning days were an absolute blast, but they were packed full of problems and solutions, because that’s the reality of a race car. On top of our private testing and tuning, we would also participate in local SCCA autocross events, because it was more testing and great driver training. These events were usually a bit more relaxed if there weren’t any issues.
The FSAE Competition
Let’s fast forward a few months to the actual competition held in Lincoln, Nebraska.
The most important step was getting through tech inspection. Tech inspection, or commonly called “scrutineering”, involved four stations, each testing a different aspect of the car. First, the car is thoroughly inspected by officials to verify all the rules had been followed. Second, accelerate for a set distant then apply the brakes at full force. All four tires must lock up and the race car cannot rotate out of control. Third, rev the engine to a set RPM for 3 seconds without overshooting the 110dB threshold. Fourth, the epic tilt table. The car and driver are tilted to over 60 degrees to check for leaks and to simulate a 2.5G cornering force. Sound nerve-wracking? It can be, but this is also pretty fun:
To our surprise, we were the third team to get through tech inspection. That may not seem like a huge accomplishment, but you need to understand that some teams never even get through tech inspection at all. The tests are exhaustive, especially for college students who just built a racing vehicle from scratch. With the tech sticker on our race car we were off to prepare for the next few days of static and dynamic events.
The next morning came, and the first event on our schedule was the design presentation. This was my biggest worry of the whole competition. Four very well educated and known motorsports engineers drill you for an entire hour with questions about your design and your decisions to get to that design. It was like standing in front of the firing squad.
All-in-all we did pretty well for being more of a hands-on focused team. The important thing was the most difficult event was behind us. Next were the other two static events, but I didn’t present in these, so we will just move forward to the dynamic events.
Like any good race car it was having issues that we couldn’t for the life of us diagnose. After limping the race car through the drag race and skid pad events, we narrowed the issues down to the fuel pressure regulator and a potential tuning issue. After completely re-designing the fuel system from an in-tank setup to an external setup we had the car running much better. There was still a mysterious tuning issue, but with only minutes to spare we pushed (all race cars had to be pushed to the events according to the rules) the race car to the autocross event in an attempt at least score some points.
The race car was difficult to drive as the throttle response was poor to say the least, but I managed to finish 25th of 90. I later found out that this was the highest score for the autocross event in PSU’s history.
Check out the Autocross event here. (Skip to 3:15.)
Last but not least was the endurance event. This event is worth 40% of the total competition points and is by far the most demanding dynamic event. On average, only 60% of the teams that start the event finish. The most common issues are engine overheating or failure to restart after the driver change, but sometimes you have an unusual issue much like the one we had to overcome. I was the first driver for the endurance event, so I was forced to improvise. The bracket that stops the accelerator pedal broke on my first lap, which resulted in the accelerator pedal being stuck wide open. I couldn’t get my foot around the pedal to pull it loose, and quitting wasn’t an option. With no other choice, I drove the next ten laps throttling through the corners with the clutch, leaving the throttle wide open. As you can see in the video, things got a little out of control for a bit, but I managed to finish my ten laps without blowing up the car.
We changed drivers and proceeded to complete the endurance event with a broken chain tensioner at lap 18. Through all those issues we finished 14th in the endurance event.
With all the points tallied up, we finished 16th place of 90 teams at FSAE Lincoln. This was and still is the highest placing in PSU’s history. None of this would have been possible without the support of my fellow teammates and our extremely supportive adviser, Evan Waymire. Of course we learned a ton about engineering, but also, and maybe most importantly, that life is not about the issues you face, but about the ways you solve them.
Life in the FSAE Lane: A Year-Long Journey March 20th, 2015CorkSport
