Hi,

I was looking around on the CorkSport website and found that they offer the 12AT as one of their imported engines. Has anyone on here went that route with their first gen? If so, has anyone on here gotten their engine through CorkSport? I've been through their shop (I live in Vancouver, WA) and they seem like some pretty nice people but I was wondering if the availabilty of the 12AT was going to be a problem in getting one or if they have a solid supplier.

Regards,
Alex

 

SEARCH the forums cuz everyone keeps askin about corksport engines and how reliable they are etc etc etc

 

A friend of mine did a 12AT for his first gen, I don't know where he got it from though. He had a heck of a time getting it running but the engine was fine.

 

im thinkin of gettin a corksport jdm engine just because its cheaper than a pineapple rebuild, n then i can still port it if i really want to. so much potential in a untouched turbo engine w/ 200hp. ah i love it.

 

I wouldn't know the differences between a US spec and JDM engine for your application. However be sure to do some research on the differences between the wire harnesses. For an example, when I did a JDM 13b-tt swap for my US spec 13b-tt there were some differences with fuel thermo wire routing. It was a pain in the *** to deal with among a few other things.

After doing some post swap research I can personally recommend that you rebuild your engine vs. JDM engine swapping. There are a number of reasons to do this.

1. You know baseline quality of your engine.
2. With a JDM engine, unless you get a warranty that extends beyond starting and running, ya really don't know what you're getting. If you can do your own compression testing with the correct technique, that would be your best bet.
3. There are just too many variables when going this route.

Alot is also based upon your mechanical resources and abilities. If you can deal with a worse case scenario go for it. If not, save up and rebuild that sucker and do it right to begin with. Just IMO, GL!

 

A few things.

1. there was a guy in tacoma about 2 years ago that did a 12at swap.
2. 12at's were FI. You can switch it over to carb though. I would reccomend that you keep the FI though. Just takes a little wiring.
3. Corksport is reliable.


Most importantly...I believe that Corksport said that the engine was not together. IIRC they tore it apart because they thought it was bad.

If I were you I would just go with a 13b the parts are more availiable and it is a better setup IMO. The 12at only put out 165. At that point you might as well turbo your stock 12a.

If you still fear wiring you can make the 13b a carb as well.

There are tons of more variables that come into play. If you are serious send me a PM. I am not going to waste space on the forum.

Z

 

Hi,

Thanks for the responses. I wasn't asking about how reliable their engines were. I know that the 12AT isn't the most common engine in the world and I was wondering if anyone had obtained one through CorkSport before. If you type CorkSport and 12AT into the search bar it comes up with one thread, mine. That means that before I posted this thread, asking this question, there were zero threads relating to my topic in the NW section. Since I live in the NW and CorkSport is in the NW, the business that I would conduct with them would be very similar to someone else who lives up here. That's why I had asked if anybody has first hand experience in getting a 12AT through them.

Red Suns, the engine that's in my first gen was just rebuilt less than 600 miles ago. I have not done a ton of research into any one route because I'm not exactly sure of which one I want to take yet. I think that if I just went off of what I have in the car now and added just a fuel injection system and a turbo system it would add up to the price of that engine. I was thinking that if I did pick up one of those 12ATs I would go with MegaSquirt which would probably help out at least a small bit and it woudl be tunable.

Z-Beater, 13B (RE/Cosmo is what I would go with) is of course, my other option. I've read through yours and rex4life's threads that detailed your swaps over and over. It doesn't seem like anything I couldn't get done but for some reason I'm still balking at it. I don't want you to waste any of your time right now because I still don't have my ideas straight in my head but I really, really appreciate your offer for guidance and will totally take you up on it when the time comes. By the way, how's yours doing?

Anyways, thank you all for all of your help and I hope we can all talk again sometime.

Regards,
Alex

 

165 bhp *but* over 180 ft lbs of torque! The 12AT had a lot of grunt, which is what makes a car feel fast. Around town, it would be a fun ride.

I'm finishing up a 12AT swap with a Microtech LT10s for a customer, right now. Fired up on the first try. Should have it on the road as early as tomorrow. Of course, it's a fresh engine; not a used JDM core. You get what you pay for. Used engines are always more affordable for obvious reasons.

Do yourself a favor and keep it Fuel Injected. I love carbs on NAs but they have no place on a turbo engine, IMHO. The Megasquirt would be ideal, since you only have two non-staged injectors and the ignition uses a boost-retard distributor...you can use the original Megasquirt with no mods. The Mazda Water Thermo Sensor is close enough to the GM one to be left alone. All you have to do is add the GM Intake Air Temp sensor to the TB hat. The TPS is simply a GSL-SE one and can be used as-is. Nothing at all challenging.

Good luck.

 

Hey, I don't think that anyone is trying to be mean Alex. As long as you learn something you are not a waste of my time.

That being said:

It sounds like your engine is fully functional. I remember a while back you had a bad clutch. Did you ever get that issue fixed?

If I were you I would not throw in a different engine. A boosted 12a is more than sufficient power wise. But before you did that I would go over your entire car and make sure that everything is adequate safety wise. How are you tires, suspension, do you have a sound engine? Don't make this an overnight thing, there will be tons of small little things that will happen and you will end up pulling your hair out. My build was done over the course of over a year. I have put over 400 hours into the build not to mention all the travel time to pick up parts. And this is also not including research and anything after first start up. You need a ton of man hours, money and most importantly a daily driver.

I am more than happy to help but go ahead and get your car in top running shape first. You will not be dissapointed with this decision later.



Z

 

Bingo...going carb would be a waste in my eyes as well

 

Z,

I didn't think anyone was trying to be mean, I just don't like being told to search for info that's not on the website. I guess I came off a little too grouchy though, huh? I apologize for that was not my intention. I didn't think that I was a waste of your time but I did not want to waste your time with an in depth discussion of something that I might not even end up doing.

Yeah, I fixed the clutch issue but the transmission is going. I have a big old 1970 F-250 that I use as my daily driver so it doesn't bother me that much that the car isn't in the best condition right now. When I do end up doing something to put more power in you can rest assured that I will overhaul the rest of the necessary parts with it.

I think if I can get my hands on the one of the 12ATs it's going to be rebuilt and put in there. Fuel injection will be kept. I'm going to have to run a lot more research on what else I'm going to do though.

I know this is most definitely not going to be an overnight project. That doesn't really bother me, I've always wanted something to work on and tinker with that will eventually be something that nobody else has, and will still fire up and drive around when I want it to.

There's going to be a lot of stuff that has to be done to get the vehicle where I want it to be and I'm not going to cut corners on anything so it will probably end up having quite a large sum of money sunk into it as well. Again, this doesn't really bother me that much as it's something that I've really been dying to do for a long time now.

I'll PM you with what I'm thinking about doing because I do want to discuss it with you and since you're a lot more knowledgeable than I am about these type of things I'd love to learn from you.

Also, what did you go through when getting your car in tip-top shape? I'm sure there are some things on my list (I wrote one up when I first got the car) that I'm missing. Are there any common mistakes you've heard people making when overhauling the important parts of an older car? Anything that a lot of people have forgotten that comes back and bites them in the ***?

Blake, I'll have to come by your shop sometime and check stuff out. Thanks a ton for the reply!

Again, I really appreciate all of your help (that's to all of you out there) and I wish you all the best of luck.

Regards,
Alex

 

If you search OUTSIDE the local forum you can find a lot more about Corksport... There's been a lot of forums about Corksport engines lately in the Generation Specific forums (mostly 3rd gen cuz I own an FD) Not trying to be mean, you just didn't have any response yet so I figured I'd try to help out...

 

Alex no problem. But you are asking a really difficult question. Each car is different. On some cars it will be suspension related, other will be electrical. You just need to do a in-depth once over of the entire car. Check your suspension, make sure that all electrical works, are your brakes good, radiator? There are tons of things. Just make sure that your car is in tip top running shape before the swap.

Take it one step at a time. If you try to do too much at once then it will me no fun for you. My car has been down for over a year now. I would have rather done a simple swap and then upgraded along to way. In other words ther are a lot of little things that I overlooked.

If you are serious about going with a turbo 13b there are tons of people in the NW that would probably be willing to share knowledge that they learned along the way( I think 8 now). Since I used an REW in my swap and the path was not as commonly tread as the usual 13bt there are a lot of little things that cause snags for me. Most were minor.

I have seen people do FI turbo 13b swaps for right around 3k. I have seen a stock REW swap for around 5k. And you don't want to know what mine cost. Let's just say that I could have bought a single turbo FD. There are lots of little things that add up in the build...

Do some research and when you are ready to do the swap come out to one of the meets. I will try and get some of the turbo FB owners out there and we can sit around and talk about the conversion. There are way way way too many details to cover over the internet on a reply. Not to mention you can check out the cars and see what people did. Everyone has different ideas.

Z