Throttle / Pedal Deadband?

[viridia]

It seems impossible to drive my S4 smoothly. I've never driven another B6/B7 S4, so I'm curious how delicately other owners can control their throttles.

Owned this car 5 years now, and it has always acted the same. There's a fairly large gas pedal deadband where absolutely nothing happens. It's viewable in VCDS: I can start pressing the gas pedal and the throttle doesn't react until a certain degree of pedal travel is achieved.

Is this normal? Took the pedal off the car and inspected the inside - it's just contacts on a circuit board. The arm is rigid with the pedal, and the contacts definitely move across the surface of the board when I'm experiencing this.

Inside of gas pedal

The car is absolutely maddening to drive. Small, delicate throttle movements are impossible without either bogging or racing the engine. Starting from first is extremely difficult because I need to press the pedal until I notice the engine responding, then release the clutch while holding that precise electronic gas position, then quickly, yet gently, increase the throttle some arbitrary amount to get the car to act like any other "normal" manual car.

Throttle body alignment procedure done, no change in the value of the position sensors, no impact whatsoever. The issue is there's a fairly large region of the gas pedal where nothing happens.

[jakeoboy67]

it's the same thing on my car, there's a significant delay between the pedal and the throttle body. I heard a tune fixes this throttle behavior, making it more direct and precise.

I don't find it harder to drive than any other manual car,
( V8 + stock, heavy ,flywheel make it almost impossible to stall the engine IMO, compared to "little" 4 cylinders)

[viridia]

Thanks for the input. My car is running a JHM ECU, and the before-tune/after-tune pedal input remains the same.

[jakeoboy67]

Thanks for the input. My car is running a JHM ECU, and the before-tune/after-tune pedal input remains the same.

oh that's weird , in VCDS when viewing the pedal position measuring block (block 054 IIRC) , does it follow your foot's input correctly(precisely) ?

[LINDW4LL]

Thanks for the input. My car is running a JHM ECU, and the before-tune/after-tune pedal input remains the same.

Something is weird as JHM tune livens the throttle response.

Odd to think something would be physically wrong with your pedal. You can log pedal position vs throttle opening in VCDS. Would be interesting to see more data.

[dolphin B6 S4]

My throttle response sounds similar, I'm JHM 93. 70% of the action happens within the first 15% of throttle input.

[viridia]

I'll connect to the car again today to see if I can get a graph. I wasn't aware there was a pedal sensor position register, will update.

[viridia]

Seems like there's two problems after some investigation. Some initial pedal movement doesn't register on the pedal sensors - it sits at about 14% on my car in group 62. Once the sensors start changing, there's another 3% that does nothing until the throttle begins to respond once the pedal sensors reach 17%.

[Durk]

Same issue with the TIP. I think it's to civilize a 340HP car with instant grip for the masses. You can stab the gas for a second and the car doesn't even flinch. Sport mode gives you some throttle response. I wish there was just a "normal throttle mode" b/w regular and sport.

[INDY-S5]

This happens to me all the time and annoys the hell out of me. Mine mainly has no throttle response when I am sitting somewhere and ready to pull out or turn a corner and hit the gas pedal and realize it has no response at all....WTF. I have almost been hit trying to pull out and then have the throttle not respond and you just sitting there like a dead duck. Scares the hell out of me sometimes. I have to completely release the pedal and press on it again to get it to move, you can mash the pedal all the way down and nothing will happen until I release the pedal and reapply pressure. Damn thing almost gets you killed if you are not aware of this annoying flaw. No car I have ever had has done anything like this, AWD or not. None has had zero response from the throttle when you press the pedal.

Hope someone figures out what it could be because it is not a normal thing to have no response like that. I have owned over 40 high end or muscle type cars and had about everything you can imagine but none have given me headaches as much as this car does and has.

[Das Audi]

I had the same issues as everyone else until a friend of mine let me try a Spring Booster. Yes I heard everyone slam the product for not producing horsepower but if you use it for correcting throttle response it helps the Audi big time. Take a look at this simple video on YouTube. Sprint Booster

[viridia]

I'd be willing to try the Sprint Booster, but it's $300. Already paid $500 for a JHM tune...

There's no evidence I can find that shows the JHM tune correcting the electronic pedal linearization - lots of forum posts, but no before/after comparisons with numbers that I can find. Other guys with VagCom, how many percentage points of pedal travel accumulate before the throttle responds?

[viridia]

Well...for fun, I grabbed another electronic gas pedal off eBay from an A4 just to try. The response is WAY better. Huh. Guess there was something odd with my pedal after all?

[verstappen]

I really dislike the throttle response in my 04 S4, it is very lazy and I hate how at times the throttle does not register my foot input at all, it's literally dead about 30% of the way. I am getting a tune just for that lol...

[PetrolDave]

I really dislike the throttle response in my 04 S4, it is very lazy.

+1

That's why I never really gelled with either of my B6 S4s, they always felt languid and lazy.