"Sprintbooster" -- worth doing or a gimmicK?

[Ryan_R]

it does nothing more than amplify the signal from the throttle pedal potentiometer before it gets to the ECU. pretty much like pushing the pedal further down.

We all know what it says it does, and no-one is disputing that. The perceived result is what matters and what we (as owners of the product) are discussing. I have floored the throttle (not from standstill) with SB off and increased throttle application a small amount with SB on and the two responses from my car are not the same. I'm not going to try to explain why, those are just the facts.

I don't mean to be rude but don't knock it until you've tried it. There's a reason why the majority of people who have tried it like it. Of course I have to add the disclaimer that I don't know if it will be as good on other cars that have turbo lag and/or don't have Stage 1.

[zei20t]

ok fair enough,

had one on my stagea, basically it made the car kick-back (being auto) when i didnt want it to as the TCU took info from the throttle input. IMO a waste of money. i just learnt to control the car better.

those of you with DSG equipped cars may suffer similar problems. possibly similar to the 'S' mode.....

what you need to do is do some 0-100 or 1/4 times with and without it enabled and post here. im not trying to call your bluff, but i guarantee people interested in the product may want read more

[Tim]

it doesnt make the car faster. It just changes how it drives. Performance figures wont change so no real point measuring.

[Ryan_R]

Yes that's right, going from cruising in a high gear to max attack is where you'll save the most time, as mentioned before it's that DSG lag. Maybe I'll try to get a video one day but not sure how well it'll capture it. Also since getting the DSG tune there's less DSG lag anyway plus the car doesn't rev as low when cruising so the SB admittedly isn't as essential in my view as it was previously.

[bennjamin]

personally

use the money that would of been spent of the sprint booster - and put that towards a stage 1 level tune for the car. Better response and more power for abit more cash.

[Ryan_R]

I did get it after Stage 1. APR helped with DSG lag maybe about 20% whereas the SB made a much bigger difference. Much more instant response. Again the DSG tune has helped a lot, I can actually drive the car around safely without the SB. That said the SB is a third of the cost of the DSG tune, although the tune is much more beneficial for the 7 speed DSG's overall.

[seppo]

personally

use the money that would of been spent of the sprint booster - and put that towards a stage 1 level tune for the car. Better response and more power for abit more cash.

Unfortunately there is no beneficial tune for 3.6L 4motion.

[bwen]

Has anyone noticed increase fuel consumption with a Sprintbooster, Pivot throttle controller, etc? I understand the theory behind it and driven other cars with it but I'm not 100% sold. I would imagine it would increase fuel consumption because say if you're driving at the speed limit say at 15% throttle position, would it be hard to replicate 15% with a throttle controller? as it might be at 20-25%?

Generally, more power = more fuel. Seeing as the SB doesn't make your car faster just wondering if there were any negatives behind it

[bennjamin]

Unfortunately there is no beneficial tune for 3.6L 4motion.

You are right - this logic does not apply to all VWs

[Ryan_R]

Slightly more fuel usage, but's that's more a driver fault than the pedal. Even on the raciest setting I was surprised how easy it was to control the pedal in car parks, etc, it becomes more like a pressure switch - you get used to it (just like you get used to the very sensitive brake pedal compared to other cars).

[zei20t]

so why not save money and get used to the factory throttle pedal??

[vk]

does anybody know where to get the newest one cheaper? 300 seems a bit much, i thought they used to go for 250

[Ryan_R]

Because of the dangerous DSG lag in the 118TSI. You had to accelerate ~half a second before you actually wanted to move if you were to adapt. Slotting into traffic was near impossible even with all of that Stage 1 power.

@vraptor 300+ has always been the going rate.

[THE_EGG]

With nearly everyone talking about using DSG equipped vehicles when using Sprintbooster which from what I can gather works quite well. How well do you think it would work on a manual 1.6 turbo (same as cooper s engine)? I should probably note I get maximum torque starting at 1400rpm.

[Ryan_R]

Not sure, guess the effect would possibly be a bit more simplistic. When researching before purchasing I noticed a few BMW owners complained about it making it harder to heel-toe when changing (of course only ~2% of people actually know how to do that).

The other thing with my car is that by default when you first start accelerating the car behaves like a NA 1.4L car, and when you push down a little bit more the supercharger engages (there was a VW video demonstrating this somewhere), with the SB you effectively remove this "are you sure?" gap, resulting in instant boost.