Fortune Auto Air Piston Lift System
 

I know these are fairly new and there isn't a lot of information about these, so i decided to share my experience with Fortune Auto. Hopefully, this post will provide some useful information for people looking into this setup.

I apologize in advance if this sounds like a gripe, as I did run into a lot of problems with this system. This is also my first time installing coil overs so please bear with me.

A friend of mine (@ATESIX) introduced me to the Fortune Auto Air Piston Lift System. After watching a video taken at SEMA, I decided they seemed like a pretty cool option to air bags. Apparently, A lot of the FT86 Hawaii members have regular Fortune Auto Coil overs and are quite happy with them. They told me that they ordered there coil overs through DSG Performance and that Jason hooked them up when it came to shipping cost.

I placed my order through DSG Performance on November 14 2015. The original order was for 4 air cups, coil overs, and tank / hardware. The total cost of the system was just under $3,000. I was contacted a week later from Jason @ DSG and he told me that Fortune Auto had jumped the gun a bit and that only the front air pistons would work on our car. I went ahead with the order anyway because I figured 2 inches of lift in the front would be enough to clear my driveway. Jason apologized for the inconvenience, refunded me the cost of the air cups, he then went out of his way and upgraded me from the 500 series to the DSG Edition 500 series coils.

December 19 2015:
Coil overs have arrived today!
My first impression was that these things are very well packaged and that the actual coil overs look awesome!

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Unfortunately, thats when I began to run into some problems. When I went to wire the compressor set up I discovered that they didn't provide enough wire. Short of bolting the setup directly onto my battery, that was just not enough wire.

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I knew this was an early version and that they might still be working out the kinks. Instead of complaining I just ran to Walmart and picked up a cheap amp wiring kit for under $22.00 after tax.

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Using the amp wiring kit, I ran all the wires down the front passenger side of the vehicle, tucking the wires into the dorm jams. The provided air tank set up looked fairly clean from the factory, so I decided to leave it until I could figure something else out.

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I decided to fire up the compressor and see if I wired everything up correctly. I started the car, compressor clicked on and began filling the tank.Unfortunately, the compressor would not shut off, and Fortune did not provide any specs as to the min / max on the pressure switch. The next day I contacted Fortune and was told that sometimes the sensor gets stuck and to try and air the tank up to 240 psi but do not exceed 250 psi. While that sounded a bit high for me, I did as they asked. Intact I did it 3 times just to make sure.

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I called Fortune back and was told that sometimes the pressure sensor gets banged around during shipping, they told me they would send me a new one. About 3/4 days later another pressor sensor arrived, and that was the source of yet another problem.

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As you can see from the picture above, the new pressure sensor they sent me was much smaller than the original. I decided to move on with the install, I could manually fill the air tank and @ 200 Psi you can air up and down about 5 times.

I started on the rears first, the install was straight forward and everything went pretty well. The rears are much smaller and lighter than the stock struts, at the height in the picture they sat at exactly the same height as the Tein S Tech they replaced. The rears could still go down about an inch and a half, but I decided to leave it at this height until I finished installing the fronts.

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That is when I encountered another problem. After lowering my car I discovered that I now had a FRS SUV as my car now had a 4 inch gap between the front tire. I still had quite a bit more I could go down in the front so I maxed it out and lowered the car again. However, I was still confronted by my FRSUV

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After surfing the forums for a few hours for possible solutions, I started to call some of the other guys that had the regular Fortune coil overs. 2 days later we were all scratching our head, I then contacted Fortune Auto again and tried a few different things with them. We went so far as to do the opposite of preload something they called "droop".

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After about a week of trouble shooting with Fortune, they admitted to me that my car was actually they first FRS to have these and that they now knew they didn't work on my car. They then offered to either refund me or the would send me the components for a normal coil over setup. I don't think Fortune Auto realized at this point that we had 3 orders for this thing, mine being the first.

I contacted Jason @ DSG and told him what had happened, he told me he would discuss it with his manager and try and come up with a solution. After about a week Jason got back to me and said that Fortune would be using an older air cup design and that they wanted me to send the fronts back to have the cups new / old cups installed. After all the problems I had, I told Jason that I would rather just send the entire system back and just get a refund.

The only reason I stuck it out and went through the pain of trouble shooting the system is because I knew some of the other guys ordered the same system. After giving Jason a list of suggestions, I sent the system back to Fortune Auto.

After receiving my return it toke Fortune Auto a week just to process my return and through out this entire process they never did once thank me for all the time and effort I put into this system. Needless to say I will NEVER do business with Fortune Auto again!

Fortune Auto did take some of my suggestions to heart though, as the next FT86 Hawaii member to get his system had some noticeable upgrades.

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As you can see from the new compressor set up, they did provide a but more power wire along with a adjustable pressor señor.

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The old/new Air Pistons now have the spring going into the air cup.

I was able to get most of the install done and some of the other guys came over to help finish the install. We were able to complete all the wiring, air lines, and coil overs in 8 hours. We could have done the install faster, however, we didn't have all the tools. We had to wait until a few of the guys finished work to get everything we needed. Honestly, I only intended to do the wiring that day but we ended up doing the entire car.

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The actual car we installed the system on is in the garage, but the other one is also on Fortune coils and they are sitting at exactly the same height.

Conclusion:

We had to max out the coils to attain the height pictured above. If you remove the locking ring you might be able to get another 1/4 in, but I don't think these were designed to go super low. Granted they are sitting pretty low at this point.

The spring rate on the car above is 7k / 8k. With these spring rates the air pistons will only lift the car an inch max. In order to attain the actual 2 inches you might have to go as low as 4k or 5k.

I asked Jason to have them include a moisture trap in future models, as I did have some trouble with the air piston seizing due to moisture build up. To be fair though we are in Hawaii and probably have excessive moisture. If you do pick up one of these kits I would recommend picking up a moisture trap for $30/$40 as it will save you a lot of headache.

I must give credit where credit is due and these things do ride very well, they are very responsive and they feel very plated. Hawaii has really bad roads and at 5 clicks from full soft they weren't bad at all for daily driving.

Bottom line is I don't think these things are worth the $2600 price tag for only an inch of lift. You can pick up a manual AirLift kit for around $2600 if you need more height adjustment. If you don't need an inch lift I would go with regular coil overs. That is just my 2 cents though, maybe some of the other owners can chime in with their reviews.


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I would like to thank the FT86 Hawaii club for allowing me to experiment on their cars. Also I would like to thank everyone that helped out with the installs and for allowing us to use your tools and also for lending a helping hand when I was absolutely stumped!

Jason @ DSG: Thank you for your patience and understanding, I know I started to lose my mind a bit at the end.

FT86club Community: Thank you for all the DIY and awesome guides that you guys produce. I would have not even attempted this with out this amazing source of information!

Thats a damn shame about the air cups and definately not a good move on Fortune, pushing untested products. :/

That being said Jason is always good to work with and glad you atleast got the refund process taken care of.

Have you started looking for a replacement setup yet?

They sold a product that's never even been test fitted?! What the fuck? That's not even regular stupid, that's advanced stupid.

Stance has an air cup system... just sayin. Unfortunate about Fortune though

the kind of stupid that requires a degree in retarded...

@Kiske: I decided to go with air bags, I just ordered an AirLift kit from Bag Riders. Hawaii doesn't have a track anymore so I figured that this setup would be more than sufficient for daily driving. Plus, it will give me something to tinker with for a while at least lol.

@calcum: Thanks I thought I was over reacting for a moment, here is an exert from an email they sent me "Your FR-S is the first to be equipped with our Air Piston Lift System and we know now that some adjustments will need to be made for that application. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused you."

They should be paying you at this point, at least giving you a free setup for doing the R&D for them.

Kinda sounds like someone forgot you need shorter springs when you have a cup kit...

They did shorten the spring by 2 inches, but if you look at the earlier pictures the spring doesn't go into the air cup. I think they didn't account for the new air cup design? In the final version the spring goes into the air cup a few inches.

thats a lot of coin and hardware for just an inch adjustability. i would rather go full airbags too at that point.

The cup kit is so you have coil over performance with air bag convenience for getting over bumps and dips. If you don't want the performance part then yeah airbags are better. But if you do then you either get a cup kit or drive across town to get to the taco bell with the shallow parking lot cuz the near one's drive way is just too steep :(

yeah i get it, but i guess i just expected the cup kit to provide at least 1.5-2 in of movement :/ i already google map and street view any "new place" that i have to go so i can check for driveways and possible big speed bumps lol

I think its possible to get 1.5-2 in lift out of these things, but you would need to go with a lower spring rate than what they are currently sending out which is 7k/8k. Maybe 5k/6k or something along those lines.

Depends on the kit. Stance sells1 and 2 inch lift