TracTive ACE Coilovers - Actively Making the GR Yaris Even Greater

We here at Suspension Secrets are big fans of the Toyota GR Yaris. With all-wheel drive, a short wheelbase, and engaging handling, the GR Yaris has been a performance car hit since it was released in September of 2020.

However, there have been some recurring issues that have been reported about the GR Yaris’s suspension system. Particularly, how the front shock absorbers have a tendency to hit their bump stops, and ‘lock out’, especially over rough tarmac, or if the car goes quickly over a crest. This is a real issue, as when the dampers reach their maximum level of compression, they hit the bump stops, and stop abruptly whilst the chassis of the car still has downward momentum.

This causes damage to the suspension system, and there have been some horror stories with some owners reporting devastating understeer over undulating tarmac or even worse, where others have reported that their windscreens have cracked due to the shocks abruptly stopping during their compression.

This issue really seems to be at odds with the Yaris’s rough and tumble personality, but luckily, it can be rectified.

That’s why we’ve teamed-up with TracTive Suspension to sell and install their TracTive ACE Touring Line Suspension Kit for the Toyota GR Yaris.

Equipped with electronically-controlled semi-active adaptive dampers, the ACE Touring Line Kit brings some much needed adjustability and control to the suspension of the GR Yaris.

We’ll explore what makes this kit so effective, and a must for any GR Yaris owner.

The ACE (Active Controlled Electronic) TracTive dampers are the centrepiece of the kit.

As their name implies, they are electronically controlled, and can change the damping rates of each individual damper within 6-10 milliseconds, which gives far greater control and reactivity to undulations in the road.

Better yet, they are plug-and-play, and are controlled by a touchscreen controller. This allows the front and rear damping to be adjusted independently.

All four dampers in the kit are specifically designed to be compatible with the existing Toyota suspension top mounts. The front dampers offer a 15% increase in spring rates compared to the original dampers, and also allow ride height adjustment up to -30mm lower than standard, and +10mm higher than the standard ride height. The front dampers also provide five positions of camber adjustment at the lower bracket.

The ability to increase negative camber is one of the most influential changes you can make to the suspension system of a performance car, so this adjustability is invaluable for giving your GR Yaris improved cornering, when setup with one of our fast road or track-biased suspension setups. We can apply one of these setups during the installation of your kit.

The rear dampers’ spring rates are increased by 20%, whilst offering the same ride-height adjustability as the fronts.

Both the front and rear dampers are set with increased compression travel and have added bump travel to ensure more comfort, and an improved ability to tackle bumps, undulations and jumps, whilst avoiding bottoming out and damaging the car.

The TracTive kit comes with specially-developed Eibach springs in order to give more support and to ensure the system has enough travel and compliance for the bumpiest roads.

Alongside the dampers and the springs, the kit also includes TracTive’s Control Unit, which is equipped with a multi-axis g-sensor, TracTive’s unique suspension algorithms, wiring harness for the unit, and the touchscreen controller.

The touchscreen controller has two different mounting options, but most likely will be installed in the small storage cubby hole behind the cupholders and handbrake. From this intuitive unit it is possible to adjust the front and rear damping independently and to control the anti-roll and pitch-control of the suspension – both of which can also be adjusted independently from one another

The control unit not only offers excellent adjustability, but also allows you to store five different suspension presets, so you can set your Yaris’s suspension to be very stiff for circuit work, and then can soften it off completely for the drive home from the track.