Good to hear. My car is the same without the OEM Mud Flaps, but was considering getting them. I was worried about it changing the aerodynamics and losing 1mpg or so because of it. Maybe it's silly, but I just didnt know if the benefits of having the mud flaps since they are fairly small on the OEM one were worth the mpg loss.
Mazda Ice Academy: Trial By Ice And Snow CX-5, CX-3 And MX-5
- Thread starter Kedis82ZE8
- Start date
Good to hear. My car is the same without the OEM Mud Flaps, but was considering getting them. I was worried about it changing the aerodynamics and losing 1mpg or so because of it. Maybe it's silly, but I just didnt know if the benefits of having the mud flaps since they are fairly small on the OEM one were worth the mpg loss.
'Just because they lowered the car doesn't mean the cornering is automatically better.'
Just because you lowered the car doesn't mean the cornering is automatically better either
" Did they get an alignment? did they check oem sway bar angles after lowering (if equipped)'
"Sway bars" or more properly anti-roll bar angles aren't locating the wheels. They might bind a bit or break if the mounting position moves too far. An alignment can correct for static camber and caster but can't change the fact that you are operating in the wrong part of the camber curve. The suspension is designed for the static setting to be at the normal ride height and a lowered car shifts them to the end of the travel. If you stiffen it up so it barely moves and run on smooth surfaces it may stick pretty good. Driving such a set up on real roads is no fun.
"The stock motor is calibrated for the oem intake, even if your aftermarket intake has the correct sizing to satisfy the oem maf (if equipped) if it's not tuned to flow more air then it can't flow more air... Period."
I don't know what you mean here. Changes to intake and exhaust are attempts to tune for more airflow. If you mean to say it won't flow more air unless you run modified maps in the ECU you are all wet. Flowing more air won't mean more power unless you add fuel but the engine is an air pump. Changes to the intake tract can make it flow more air regardless of the air/fuel map. The main reason intake mod's don't add much if any horsepower is that the factory engineers have already done a pretty good job. Mostly those intake kits just make more noise.
"And while it's certainly something people do, it's not my case, and frankly it's kind of hard to do with the new gen mazdas because suspension wise, their aren't many "cheap" parts out."
You can pay a million dollars for your springs and shocks but unless you change the length's of the control arms and/or the suspension mounting points you are still running sub optimal geometry.
Just because you lowered the car doesn't mean the cornering is automatically better either
" Did they get an alignment? did they check oem sway bar angles after lowering (if equipped)'
"Sway bars" or more properly anti-roll bar angles aren't locating the wheels. They might bind a bit or break if the mounting position moves too far. An alignment can correct for static camber and caster but can't change the fact that you are operating in the wrong part of the camber curve. The suspension is designed for the static setting to be at the normal ride height and a lowered car shifts them to the end of the travel. If you stiffen it up so it barely moves and run on smooth surfaces it may stick pretty good. Driving such a set up on real roads is no fun.
"The stock motor is calibrated for the oem intake, even if your aftermarket intake has the correct sizing to satisfy the oem maf (if equipped) if it's not tuned to flow more air then it can't flow more air... Period."
I don't know what you mean here. Changes to intake and exhaust are attempts to tune for more airflow. If you mean to say it won't flow more air unless you run modified maps in the ECU you are all wet. Flowing more air won't mean more power unless you add fuel but the engine is an air pump. Changes to the intake tract can make it flow more air regardless of the air/fuel map. The main reason intake mod's don't add much if any horsepower is that the factory engineers have already done a pretty good job. Mostly those intake kits just make more noise.
"And while it's certainly something people do, it's not my case, and frankly it's kind of hard to do with the new gen mazdas because suspension wise, their aren't many "cheap" parts out."
You can pay a million dollars for your springs and shocks but unless you change the length's of the control arms and/or the suspension mounting points you are still running sub optimal geometry.
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- RDX Aspec Adv.
The 70mph plus slalom was what impressed me for a fox body
Chris_Top_Her
Contributor
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- San Antonio, Texas
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- '15 CX-5 Miata AWD
Bottom line is, a questionable test on a questionable TV show is trumped by real world feedback and racing and personally, over 100000 miles in AWD cx-5's with said mods. I pay to get the max performance from my vehicle, anything less is removed and resold, or modified or if needed another part purchased to complete it.
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I think I understand. Your heavily modded CX-5 could beat a Toyota Prius. (rofl2)
But what's that have to do with the Mazda Ice Academy and the outstanding snow and ice performance of the CX-5? (dunno)
Chris_Top_Her
Contributor
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- San Antonio, Texas
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- '15 CX-5 Miata AWD
I think I understand. Your heavily stock CX-5 could match a Toyota Prius (loser).
It has nothing to do with op but rather it was a response to another off topic post. (hijack)
OK done hijacking, However, "My CX-5 will run rings around everything else here" wasn't exactly on topic either.
OK done hijacking, However, "My CX-5 will run rings around everything else here" wasn't exactly on topic either.
Wait a moment. Are you saying we should stay on topic. Wow. I hadn't observed that before. I think I am in trouble. Discussing on / off topic is off topic. Gulp. Grin.
Mazda CX-5 AWD SUV Snowy Hill Showdown
2016 Mazda Ice Academy and Bridgestone Blizzak Winter Tires
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- RDX Aspec Adv.
Well, damn. Can't argue that! Looks like the scooby bit it.
impressive. Trying to judge by the video, and it seems to me that all vehicles had the same tires. Looked like Michelin X-ice 2 to me...
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- RDX Aspec Adv.
I wish I had known about them before I bought tires, or I would have bought those. However, live/learn. I plan to see how well/bad my current LX20's do if it ever snows this year here...
The woman makes some good human arguments why winter tires are a good investment vs. "getting by" with all-seasons.
They are all on Bridgestone Blizzak WS80 tires. And that's what makes this test a fair comparison of the various AWD systems.
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- RDX Aspec Adv.
Snow tires are like a 5-point racing harness where I live, but some good 40K mile tread-life "compromise" tires like the Michelin's do seem a good investment.
A strong case could be made that AWD is like driver training wheels and winter tires are like airbags. I've driven to some pretty amazing places with FWD and good tires (summer and winter). Driver skill almost always negates the need for AWD but good tires are additive to driver skill.
That said, I've taken my CX-5 places both summer and winter that would not have been possible with FWD (even with good tires). But they are few and far between.
Can someone enlighten me what's going on in the most recent video with three SUVs climbing the snow hill from a stop (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLnFHKZLApk)? In the Subaru promotions with rollers/water on steel ramps (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCuvwYd9JuE), all cars showed all of their wheels spun trying to get up the ramp. But in this video, the Subaru and Honda had their front wheels slipping like crazy, yet the rear wheels didn't even kick in.
The mazda video turned the wheels and most roller videos are done with the wheels straight.
AWD systems have a hard time dealing with "tight corner braking" and they have to reduce the rear wheel torque when the car is trying to go around a tight turn. Mazda likely put a extra line or two of code in their logic..
If(car is stopped and wheels are turned)
do not worry about "tight corner braking"
else
operate like every other AWD system
This PDF for the 2006 rav4 (system pretty much identical to CX-5) talks about it at little:
http://rav4world.com/pdf/2006/2006_4wdsystem.pdf
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Thanks much for the explanation, I was scratching my head when I saw the first video a few days back, why did the drivers turn their front wheels before going over the hill.
At least Mazda was honest in their talk in one of the video that their hardware is not much different from others, it's the software that is smarter.
From a software engineering point of view, with 27 sensors, I wonder if they just have rules/decision-tree deducted from a huge pile of collected data and desired behaviors, or if there's some neural network involved (though unlikely as AI is less predictable for fine-tuning).
