Sprint booster pedal box my review

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Joined
Oct 4, 2019
Messages
49
Location
Worcestershire
Car
E63 W211
Just fitted one of these to my W211 E63. First impressions is it has certainly improved the feel of the car. If your on the fence like I was about them I would recommend one as long as you understand their limitations and what they do. There are a lot of opinions on pedal boxes online both good and bad but trying to avoid any confirmation bias my initial thoughts are.
  1. It has removed the flat/dead spot merc throttles seems to have (also have an sl which also exhibits the same trait) on the first 20-25% of travel. This alone for me is worth the cost.
  2. It seems to lesson the propensity of the gearbox to constantly hunt for higher gears. Possibly due to the amplified throttle signal keeping the car in a lower gear.
  3. Revving the car stationary it appears the throttle is opening faster compared to standard. This could be because depressing the throttle at the same rate with both the standard and enhanced throttle map your reaching a higher percentage of throttle sooner with the sprint booster turned on.
  4. The result of all the above on the most aggressive setting it is so easy to spin up the rears compared to standard if your not careful.
It has been claimed this mod is just a placebo but I definitely feel it has improved the driving experience. I also feel calling it such or saying just press the pedal harder is missing the point or the wrong way of looking at it. If you understand it’s not magic and not giving you any more power, thereby accepting it’s just a device to alter the throttle position to power requested from the ecu. It then can be equated as doing the same function (tailoring the car to suit the driver) as an adjustable chair or steering wheel, which I’m sure most people would rather not do without.

If you buy an amg you want it to feel alive and responsive. I feel these cars should of come from the factory with a more aggressive throttle map such as this, after all an amg is bought for the performance not economy. It has also made me wonder if the factory map was dialled back on purpose to cater for the lowest common dominator that might find themselves behind the wheel.

I found this on a bmw website but you could easily imagine it would apply to any manufacturer and it speaks a thousand words to support my own findings.

thottle_map.JPG


Driving for me is is all about how a car feels and responds and personally I much prefer the feel of the green curve to either linear or standard. Having more resolution earlier in the throttle travel is for me preferable and easier to modulate than later due to the position and therefore control of your foot/ankle when it is fully depressed. (If any automotive engineers are on the forum would be interested to know if the standard curve is anything like this and the reasons for it, although I do have some ideas)

So to sum up it does not give you more power but for me the change of exponential over the standard throttle response and ability to have control over the shape of the curve (via the adjuster that comes with it) is worth the price of the product.
 
It won't give you more torque either , but it will give you it earlier .

Even a few mpg can be had as the driver over compensates for a slow throttle plate by it eventually opening up too much as it plays catch up to the drivers wish .
 
I haven’t had it on long enough to establish if it has any impact on mpg but that is an interesting point. I will keep an eye on it and report back.
 

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