Cusco Touring A – 40 step adjustable dampers with eCon2

Upgrading the suspension is vital to your vehicle’s handling and overall characteristics. Therefore when it comes to upgrading your current setup, it can be really tricky, especially given the amount of options there is. Usually people choose between lowering springs & coilover suspension kits.

Today, I am going to be talking about an atypical mixture of both of those options mentioned above. Whiteline 25mm lowering springs with Cusco Touring-A damping adjustable shock absorbers and eCon2 – Electronic damping controller.

I’ve had my GT86 for several months now and I wanted the car to be slightly stiffer, eliminate body roll and also improve the appearance a little bit by lowering it. At the same time I did not want to commit to a proper coilover suspension as I use my car daily, so comfort is important. A correct choice of lowering springs would improve the handling, but would also make the ride stiffer and less comfortable, not to mention that factory shock absorbers are not designed for the added stress you would put them under by decreasing the length of the springs. This is the reason why I chose Cusco Touring A 40-way adjustable dampers with eCon2. I wanted to retain the OEM ride quality without needing coilovers that would make my day-to-day driving experience less comfortable and with being able to adjust the damping while driving I can adjust my suspension stiffness to city roads, country roads or track.

How does it work you may ask. Cusco electronic damping controller comes in a box with 4 motors that sit on top of the struts adjusting the damping as you wish.

All four motors are plugged into a control box that is connected to a sufficient power source to be able to operate all motors and communicate with the controller that sits on my centre panel above the A/C buttons attached by a hook & loop fastener that comes with it.

The control box is really small, therefore it’s easy to hide it in the passenger side footwell. On this picture you can see the display port, which you connect your controller to, sensor port which you can connect your G-sensor to and Monitor which is just an LED that flashes green, orange or red depending on the error code.

Here is the rear side of the control box where you plug your motors and power source to.

The process of installing it is fairly easy and all you need is a pair of pliers, screwdriver and the tools included in the box. It is completely up to you how you decide to run the wires from the motors to the control box, but here’s how we did it.

Tucked behind the brake master cylinder and along the firewall.

Going down behind the battery through the main harness opening in the firewall.

And into the footwell where we’ve tucked it away behind the plastic trim.

The rear was slightly different. Equally simple though. We removed everything from the boot, screwed the motors on and put the wires underneath the carpets leading into the back seat area.

We had to remove some bits here and there to do it properly, but everything is really well hidden along the transmission tunnel.

Now connecting the controller. For that we had to remove the start button trim as we needed to get the controller through there.

Then we attached it above the heating buttons.

At this point you should just find a sufficient power source for the control box so everything works and you’re good to go 🙂

Cusco Touring A – 40-way Adjustable Dampers

Cusco eCon2 – Electronic Damping Controller

Whiteline Lowering Springs