SprintBooster discussion

[prise]

what i beleive it also does is move the throttle body butterfly "in real" time, where in standard set up, it seems there is slight delay.
Fly by wire is notorious for not having instant reaction like the old fashioned throttle cable.

Without inventing time travel (it would have to send the output before it receives the input) nothing you put between the pedal and ECU can make the butterfly move in real time, all it can do is magnify pedal movements and pass them on which would make the car feel more responsive but not achieve anything you couldnt achieve with a faster and more aggressive right foot.

A number of manufacturers now change pedal to torque mapping along with things like damper settings when 'sport mode' is selected - I think subaru did this with their liberty gt and afaik BMW have offered selectable throttle pedal sensitivity before. It would be nice to be able to customise the mapping from pedal position to demanded torque as it really is a personal preference thing.

A VCDS log of pedal position with the engine off and ignition on would be sufficient to get an idea on what they are doing with the pedal position.

[Peter Jones]

Without inventing time travel (it would have to send the output before it receives the input) nothing you put between the pedal and ECU can make the butterfly move in real time, all it can do is magnify pedal movements and pass them on which would make the car feel more responsive but not achieve anything you couldnt achieve with a faster and more aggressive right foot.

The throttle input prediction capability would be possible if you attached a holographic power balance band to the pedal.

[triode12]

The problem is no matter how fast you move your foot, you will still not be able to remove the pedal delay.

[Corey_R]

Exactly . I don't know if the lag we all know and love is just a DSG thing, a VW thing, or if it's common to all cars with ETC (to the same severity in anycase).

I don't have an R, and have never driven one. My car is the first one I've owned with ETC, and it didn't feel right. I ignored it because I loved everything else about the Mk6 Golf. If lag = delay = slower, then no lag has to be faster (in the real world). I know what all the marketing material says about no extra performance, but from all the searching I did - the only negative reviews I found were associated with Manual transmission vehicles where the drivers couldn't do 'heel-n-toe' downshifts as well, besides the fact their cars were already much faster than mine and probably had a Sports button that did the job. I've had my car since August last year and have tried quite a few techniques - and a good launch was a fluke at best, but not as good or consistent/predictable as what I'm getting now.

My drivetrain is compeltely different to your R so you're better off discussing with Fab anyway. Maybe the fact I have a supercharger makes an even bigger difference for me (the GTI and R aren't twin-charged, right?)

But it's NOT faster. More responsive to your initial foot movement yes, but not faster. What you are saying is going against everything that the manufacturer is saying. I've no problem with the comments that Fab or Triode or Dave have said. But your claims are going beyond what the product even has access to do, let alone is capable of doing...

Remember that the Golf and the DSG "adapts" to how you're driving. If you're pottering around then it will act lazy. But if you "stab the pedal" constantly, then it will act spiritedly. If anything, I believe that you're being mislead by the fact that the car is in "spirited mode" constantly now because the SB has taken away the lower thresholds of the pedal movement (as advertised) so that the car no longer uses the "lazy adaption".

The main component of a "sprint booster" is a resistor which costs about 5 cents from any electronics store. This is probably about the most offensive thing about these products.

Yeah.... makes me want to dismantle a Golf accelerator to see what components are actually in it....

The problem is no matter how fast you move your foot, you will still not be able to remove the pedal delay.

IF there is an electronic delay, and IF the Sprint Booster is actually able to remove it, then the delay would have to be in the pedal itself as the SB wouldn't be highly unlikely to be able to "rewrite" the logic of the ECU. But then, to remove an electronic delay from within the pedal it would need to be installed BEFORE the component which adds this delay - which it isn't. It's simply a case of unplugging the wires from behind the pedal, plugging in the SB, then plugging in the wires.

All of this simply backs up what the SB How It Works Page states. As I said before, notice how the "How It Works" page doesn't mention ANYTHING about a "delay"?

ALL the Sprint Booster is doing, is changing the pedal travel. THAT'S IT

Again, I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with what the product is designed for. I'd love it if pressing putting the car into "Sport mode" on the ACC also enabled the pedal mapping that the SB does. But lets not be making claims that not even Sprint Booster make about their product!

[Buller_Scott]

it's pure placebo.

want a good read on just how awesome this d7ck-smith-resistor-in-a-box is? here's the sprint booster white paper

a snippet:

The Sprint Booster amplifies or increases the amplitude of the accelerator pedal signal. It directly affects only this one parameter, signal amplitude. It, in and of itself, doesn't really do anything faster. The speed at which things get done depends upon how fast the driver presses the accelerator pedal. So, we must know how fast the pedal is moving to see if things are happening faster.

Let's consider what happens when we depress the accelerator pedal. We are moving the pedal over a unit of time. In my case, if I stomped on the pedal, I could get it to the floor in about 0.2 second. The accelerator pedal signal increases with travel. It will increase to maximum value in 0.2 second in this case. With the Sprint Booster in circuit, maximum value is reached at 2/3 travel. Converting to time, that would be 2/3 x 0.2 or about 0.13 seconds. So, we shaved off 0.07 in the time it takes to go to maximum value when flooring it.

[Corey_R]

Converting to time, that would be 2/3 x 0.2 or about 0.13 seconds. So, we shaved off 0.07 in the time it takes to go to maximum value when flooring it.[/I]

Hehehe yep! And then, when you take your foot off the accelerator, the Sprint Booster actually adds more delay, because the last third of the pedal is "deadzone".

Thanks for posting that link Buller_Scott. I just finished reading it.

The whitepaper confirms what my understanding was, and it also confirms what Sprint Booster themselves say the device does on their "How It Works" page. The whitepaper also covers the topic of "adaptive ECUs". Whilst it's specific to Mercedes, the topic comfirms that my suggested explanation to Ryan_R's claims is probably in fact exactly what is happening. But with the Golf, not only do we have two or more "characteristic curves" for the ECU, but we've also got multiple characteristic mappings for the DSG too! Combine those together and we've got one complex little beast in the Golf!

[Buller_Scott]

Thanks for posting that link Buller_Scott. I just finished reading it.

no probs

of all the crap talking (me, mostly) and reading, and discussion and technical info i've read during my time here, the thread (polo 9n3, ages ago) that mentioned that paper sticks out like a sore thumb in my mind.

not to rain on anyone's parade, but for those who were considering it, there might just be 2 sides to the sprintbooster coin.

[cameronp]

It would be nice to be able to customise the mapping from pedal position to demanded torque as it really is a personal preference thing.

Yes! Personally, if anything I'd actually prefer the opposite of what the Sprint Booster claims to do - making it easier to drive my Golf smoothly and sedately. Call me an unfinessed pedal-masher from the West coast, but I found it took a while to adjust to driving normally with what felt like an "on-off" accelerator pedal. And that's certainly not a case of getting used to the power or torque in the 118TSI either, because even after an APR tune, the Golf has less power, less torque and about the same weight compared to my previous car.

[triode12]

Lets take two Rs (identical in options), except that one has SB installed and the other w/o. If we lined them up for a race down the straight. The one with SB would have the edge because it would have a headstart due to not having the in built delay when it's driver stomped on it. It isn't faster due to having more power over the non-SB car but it is faster due to the fact that it reacted faster to it's driver's throttle input.

In both my Golfs, this pedal delay is noticeable (to me) esp when trying to merge into traffic when in low revs. Stomping on the pedal doesn't help because there is still a fraction of a second delay before the car reacts. So anything to take away this delay would be a welcomed (to me).

The ETC delay is reminds me of my first $300 digital compact camera (2 Megapixel) - the delay upon pressing the shutter button was about 1/4 a second. This was long enough to make it useless for shots that involved moving subjects. And for static shots, I had to make sure I held the camera still for that 1/4 second while it rendered the image off it's sensor, snapping off a quick one would cause blurred shots due to camera shake. It was totally useless/impractical for the job it was meant to do - take candid shots.

[Buller_Scott]

i think you may be over-dramatising the situation a little bit.

to liken a non-SB golf R to an old digi camera is cool, and its an effective analogy, but if the delay in throttle pick up in an R WERE indeed quarter of a second, the SB is still only shaving 1/4 of that 1/4 of a second, or something like that, using the white paper's examples.

i mean, with DSG equipped cars, we're not even talking about fractions of a second here. we're talking HUNDREDTHS of a second, formula one style. unless the ''lag'' in dsg's is as little as hundredths of a second also, then no.... sorry, but the SB is NOT eliminating, or even going very far into reducing, lag (in reality, that is- the placebo effect will no doubt override this, though).

i'm not trying to stir things up- this topic was covered extensively in the polo forums by a guy called celestine, who had done a crap load to his 1.6L polo, was at the ceiling of mods, and looking for more.

ultimately, it's your money and your call, but to get a stage two golf R monster, whose 0-100 times are starting to etch into supercar territory, and say that the SB gives you an advantage...........

in fact, that would be the ultimate test- do another run, Fab_R. all this speculation and talk of ''lag elimination'' is great, but what's the difference, real world?

i mean, look at the thing:


i doubt, if you open one up, that you'd find a microprocessor in there. it'd be 30c resistors (harsh, but that's how many in-line units work on these cars).

it'd be interesting to see Fab's new 0-100 times with the SB in. might work out to be 4.30 instead of 4.37, lol.

[Corey_R]

Lets take two Rs (identical in options), except that one has SB installed and the other w/o. If we lined them up for a race down the straight. The one with SB would have the edge because it would have a headstart due to not having the in built delay when it's driver stomped on it. It isn't faster due to having more power over the non-SB car but it is faster due to the fact that it reacted faster to it's driver's throttle input.

As per both the Sprint Booster "How It Works" page and the white paper's measurements, the ONLY delay that Sprint Booster removes is the fact that 100% throttle is now 66% pedal position. I.e. If you could put your foot down in .2 of a second, with the SB you now only need to get to 2/3 position for it to be "down", so that's now only about 0.13 seconds, saving you 0.07 seconds.

This is the ONLY mention it has of reducing any "delay".

Even Sprint Booster STATE that it will not improve your times!

[Fixxxer]

i mean, look at the thing:


i doubt, if you open one up, that you'd find a microprocessor in there. it'd be 30c resistors (harsh, but that's how many in-line units work on these cars).

it'd be interesting to see Fab's new 0-100 times with the SB in. might work out to be 4.30 instead of 4.37, lol.

Agreed, you can make a very basic example using potentiometers (pots) to modify the signal output voltage of any device, including AFM's, Coolant Temp sensors, Air intake sensors, etc...
And in this case, the accelerator pedal, which appears to use a common 0-5v output.
This mod has been performed a number of times on Autospeed.com
Fixxxer

[triode12]

i think you may be over-dramatising the situation a little bit.

to liken a non-SB golf R to an old digi camera is cool, and its an effective analogy, but if the delay in throttle pick up in an R WERE indeed quarter of a second, the SB is still only shaving 1/4 of that 1/4 of a second, or something like that, using the white paper's examples.

i mean, with DSG equipped cars, we're not even talking about fractions of a second here. we're talking HUNDREDTHS of a second, formula one style. unless the ''lag'' in dsg's is as little as hundredths of a second also, then no.... sorry, but the SB is NOT eliminating, or even going very far into reducing, lag (in reality, that is- the placebo effect will no doubt override this, though).

i'm not trying to stir things up- this topic was covered extensively in the polo forums by a guy called celestine, who had done a crap load to his 1.6L polo, was at the ceiling of mods, and looking for more.

ultimately, it's your money and your call, but to get a stage two golf R monster, whose 0-100 times are starting to etch into supercar territory, and say that the SB gives you an advantage...........

in fact, that would be the ultimate test- do another run, Fab_R. all this speculation and talk of ''lag elimination'' is great, but what's the difference, real world?

i mean, look at the thing:


i doubt, if you open one up, that you'd find a microprocessor in there. it'd be 30c resistors (harsh, but that's how many in-line units work on these cars).

it'd be interesting to see Fab's new 0-100 times with the SB in. might work out to be 4.30 instead of 4.37, lol.

Sorry I lost you there - why would SB only be "shaving 1/4 of that 1/4 of a second"?

It if it shaves off the delay, it would be the whole 1/4 second (I am not saying that it is 1/4 second delay in the R mind you - it is just for arguments sake).

I also don't get the point that is it only a couple of 30c resistors in the package. So what if it is? Someone has thought of a solution to a problem (throttle delay) and put the solution into a neat package. He has had to design, manufacture, market and distribute the product. That takes guts, effort and money, not counting the fact that he had the brains to come up with the solution in the first place.

Are you going to tell me that since it is only a couple of resistors, that you would be willing to make one up yourself (using parts from Jaycar) and solder the resistors onto the throttle connector of your vehicle?

For me, the SB will not be about gaining an advantage at the lights or down a straight of a track. It is to get rid of that irritating delay when I stomp on the pedal at low revs - this delay can be dangerous esp when trying to merge into fast moving traffic on an adjacent lane where any delay could result in someone driving into your behind.

Even at high speeds and revs, the delay is evident, the pedal has a bit of travel before the car responds to throttle input.

[triode12]

As per both the Sprint Booster "How It Works" page and the white paper's measurements, the ONLY delay that Sprint Booster removes is the fact that 100% throttle is now 66% pedal position. I.e. If you could put your foot down in .2 of a second, with the SB you now only need to get to 2/3 position for it to be "down", so that's now only about 0.13 seconds, saving you 0.07 seconds.

This is the ONLY mention it has of reducing any "delay".

Even Sprint Booster STATE that it will not improve your times!

Corey, think carefully about it for a second.
If someone has the jump on you at the lights racing down a drag strip, don't you think he'd be faster across the line? (both of you are in identical cars)
His car may not be faster in velocity (in comparison to yours) but the fact that he reacted faster to the lights made him "faster" across the line. That is what the SB does - removes the delay.

[Fab_R]

it'd be interesting to see Fab's new 0-100 times with the SB in. might work out to be 4.30 instead of 4.37, lol.

Fair comments Buller_Scott

Challenge put down, and i will take it out tonight and see what it does.

Cheers.
Fab