TEIN EDFC ACTIVE Controller: Suspension tuning at its best

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The beauty of taking both G-Force and GPS-based vehicle speed units is the ability to program the suspension to almost fully adjust exactly the way you want it. I say “almost” fully because we obviously can’t adjust camber, toe or ride height on the fly. Still, look at all you can do! In this example, we could be going 40 km/h (the units do covert to MPH if desired), cruising at a medium stiffness level, with the front slightly stiffer. When applying the brakes, the car stiffens up the front and rear slightly, while the same thing happens when acceleration G’s are detected, just not as harsh. At 100 km/h, the same thing happens, only starting from a stiffer setting, all of which happens automatically. Again, all of these are user programmable. It’s really cool stuff!

You may have noticed that the original picture in this article shows an EDFC ACTIVE “PRO”. While the EDFC ACTIVE performs wonders, the EDFC ACTIVE PRO—which was released in 2014—goes one step further by using lateral G’s as a fourth dimension in its tuning (braking Gs, acceleration Gs and vehicle speed being the other three). Therefore, instead of tuning for front-vs-rear as we’re doing with the EDFC ACTIVE on our Project Supra, you can tune all four corners individually with the EDFC ACTIVE PRO (seen here in the 64-adjustment level mode). Awesome.

The EDFC ACTIVE PRO also featured two additional external input ports for external signals like E-brake use, or even for the use of the vehicle speed signal data for places where a GPS signal is unavailable.

In order to be able to run any of TEIN’s EDFC units, the car needs to be fitted with EDFC-compatable suspension. Fortunately for the our Supra, the TEIN Type Flex its sporting is one of those coil-over systems.

Pictured here is front-right TEIN FLEX coil-over installed on our Project Supra…

So far, the ride quality in the Supra has been just about right for my taste. If I want to run it at full soft, it rides smoother than the factory suspension on my Project BMW E46 M3. And when I turn it to full stiff, the difference is obvious, if not even eye-opening. But the stiffness is still manageable as long as the road surface isn't too messed up.

Personally, I'm currently using a middle-ground setup for normal use. On a 16-click scale, it's usually in the 10s to 12s, with the front moving to a “0” under heavy breaking and the rear squatting to a “16” (full soft) when I'm really accelerating at low speed, and maybe down to a “12” at high speeds.  At speeds over 100 MPH, I like to keep the ride stiffer, at around an “8”, with the rear only coming down to a “10” under a hard pull.