Hey guys

Devices known as Sprintbooster, Pedal Commander, some here would have you believe these are magical items, that will make your car perform faster, be careful they are literally fairy dust and just like fairy dust will have zero impact on your cars performance.

Many years ago when I had a 911 (997.1) so just like the Jaguar it used a drive by wire throttle and as such I see this device promising better performance and improved throttle response leading to better performance. As it was rather cheap I though OK lets give it a try.

Upon getting the device, nicely presented and well packaged plus literally about two minutes to install and with the switch you could toggle between off, sport and race modes.

Off: No impact:
Sport: Throttle sensitivity improved.
Race: Crazy throttle sensitivity.

So I did a lot of quarter mile racing and also on circuit driving and this is what I discovered.

1/4, 60FT times had zero improvement and in wet conditions the car was actually slower because it was so much harder to modulate the throttle with the sprint booster set to sport or race modes, even after trying the different individual throttle mappings.
The only benefit for me was when the 911 was in its normal mode the throttle map is purposely mapped with poor response down low to make the car safer to drive in wet/slippery conditions, meaning have to press pedal more to go faster, with the device in sport the pedal felt more natural, but the car was no faster, just the feeling of faster which is not actually faster.

But with the car in sport mode, with the sprintbooster in sport or race the gas pedal was over-sensitive and in race so twitchy because in the first 30% of pedal travel you were getting upto 100% so whereas before you had a nice linear pedal where 25% was 25 throttle, 50 was 50, 75 was 75 and 100 was WOT, now it was a simple case that the first 30% of pedal movement was 0-100% at the ECU resulting in a crazy and over-sensitive pedal making the car so hard to drive and really unpleasant.

After a couple of weeks with the device fitted and several 0-60, 0-100 and quarter mile runs showing zero improvement and the car more difficult to drive in the wet and thus slower I removed the device and sold it.


Lets make it clear these devices only do:
- Adjust the throttle pedal sensitivity
- They make the car feel faster, as you need less pedal input
- Make your pocket $300 lighter
- That is it!

These devices do not do:
- They are not removing lag
- They are not an ECU tune
- They do not manipulate the ECU in anyway
- They do not make your car faster
- They do not give you more power or torque
- They add no performance


If you want better pedal sensitivity, I find dynamic mode and the engine in dynamic on an F-Type is more than enough, in fact for me it is too much, I drive my SVR in dynamic mode but with the engine set to normal, because I like a linear throttle, because surely is that not generally what most of us want, that when we press the gas pedal by say 20% we get 20% power, if we press it 70% we get 70% power and if we got WOT, we get 100%, maybe its because I do a lot of track days and I like my linear throttle input, it helps keep the car balanced mid corner, nothing worse than an over-sensitive throttle when your trying to feed in the power in a linear and gradual fashion.

Also testing quarter mile between snow mode and dynamic mode, no performance difference!


So please if you want your cars to go truly faster the best value for money is:
1. Tune and VAP is the recommended place to go and they can give you their tune or any of the Jaguar tunes, so if you own a V8S you could simply request the SVR or P8 maps if you prefer the idea of sticking with Jaguars mapping.
2. Upper pulley only, this works, it is not ideal but you will get some mid-range gains, but no top-end power and in performance terms very little change.
3. Best upper or lower pulley combined with a tune.

Pedal command, sprintbooster are all snake oil all they change is throttle sensitivity and lighten your wallet by $300 or so, if you want a faster car a tune is your best option.

I am making this post as in recent weeks several new sign up members with very limited post count and only just signed up seem to be trying to spread lies, rumours and false information about such devices, don't be the fool who falls for their trap, they are either really crazy people or are on the payroll of sprintboost or pedal commander or an employee.

Save your money, get a tune or enjoy the amazing car Jaguar made, if there is one thing, an F-Type V8 absolutely needs no more throttle response particular once in dynamic mode.

 

Q: Then why does a tune do the same thing?
A: Because reducing throttle lag is not a waste of money.

It's obvious from the thousands of Amazon reviews, with an average rating of 5 stars, that the primary difference in feel between any tune and no tune is throttle remapping.

Read the reviews, they say it completely transforms the car from dead in the water to a ferocious rubber shredding beast. That's not minor.

It's clear after actually reading those reviews, rave after rave, that around 90% of the feel of every tune is the throttle opening faster, making the car genuinely faster. A faster launch is, in fact, a faster car. Tunes don't do anything else at 600 RPM.

Do you also think launch control does nothing to make a car faster?

Is AWD an outrageous scam that doesn't make the car any faster to 60?

Are tires a complete waste of money?

Are dual clutch transmissions a mindless dupe on dumb people?

None of these add any engine horsepower or torque, so they have to be 100% valueless scams by your logic. Why do you think people buy these things to make their car faster? Pure stupidity in all cases?

 

A tune does not do the same thing, a tune gives you more power via increasing spark, fuelling, altering cam angles and torque demand tables, a pedal device does not do this. In a tune you specify how you want the throttle maps and drive by wire, some poeple request they be left factory stock or on switchable maps as all they impact is throttle sensitivity, you go no faster.

Amazon reviews, yeah OK, most left by the product manufacturer themselves, OK.

Its changes throttle response, to most people this makes the car FEEL faster, but feeling faster and been faster are not the same thing. Fantasy VS Reality!

Throttle sensitivity has no impact on acceleration if you know how to drive and know how to make full use of your accelerator pedal.

Launch control: Slips the clutch to the optimum getaway, an algorithm in a cars ECU map that actually improves real world performance.
AWD: Optimises traction and very beneficial to high horsepower cars that if they were FWD or RWD would be traction limited. Perfect example in the UK you can get the V8R in both RWD and AWD, both are 550PS but of course the AWD is faster to 60mph, due to vastly improved 60FT time that comes from optimised traction. However 60-130mph the RWD model is slightly quicker due to the fact their is less transmission loss and the RWD model weighs about 80kg less.
Good VS Bad tyres: A physical component that keeps you on or off the black stuff, good ones perform better compared to cheap runs.
Dual Clutch transmission: Can change gear as quick as 80ms consistently every time, much faster than a human can and whilst been consistent and more friendly on the car


All the above are proven technologies that were heavily researched and have made cars the better for it.

If Sprintbooster is so good, then why are the manufacturers not offering it themselves on their cars from the factory or as a performance option?

As I say Sprintbooster has zero impact on performance, it is just a placebo effect of feeling faster!

 

Please don't feed the trolls.

 

 

Nope, don't even run a tune on my car, but I can see they have good service and I like the fact they will also offer to flash your car with a Jaguar map of your choice if you don't wish to use their own map.

 

That's all wrong, all tuners reduce throttle lag or they would have virtually no impact at 600 RPM.

On this very forum people absolutely rave about the VAP tune's "far more aggressive throttle map."

I don't have either, but I'm sure it is night and day off the line to open the throttle instantly. My V8 has a lot of throttle delay left in Dynamic mode. Hopefully a pulley will help. A pure sw tune without a new throttle curve would do absolutely nothing at 600 RPM.

 

You don't drive at 600rpm!

Throttle response is also down to torque demand increasing also, which is separate from throttle mapping, but has an impact on throttle response. If I get VAP to tune my car, I will request throttle mapping is left per stock as I don't want additional throttle response as torque demand will improve throttle response as would a smaller pulley due to the SC mechanically spinning faster at given RPM.

My V8 has no throttle delay, I hit WOT, its wide open and I am hitting 60mph in under 3s and crossing the quarter mile in 11.2s, no lag there.

 

I see 600 RPM every few minutes. My V8 has a lot of delay to open the throttle. Even revving in place is noticeably delayed behind my foot by as much as a second in dynamic, quite slow.

Maybe you arent very picky? It's perfectly OK to be thrilled with an OEM tune.

My advice is keep it stock if you are running 2 sec 0-60 times, no need to throw away thousands of dollars to void that warranty. OEM warranties on these cars make the difference between premium pricing and gutter pricing, even with single digit miles on the clock, in case you don't follow the used market.

 

Your car sounds broken.

 

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I drove eighteen V8Rs and V8Ss before buying it. I rated this one 2nd strongest, but the best overall deal with OEM warranty out to 2 weeks shy of 2022 and 100K miles. I think the stronger one had a pulley as it was also an S, but had way too many miles at 28K vs. my V8S under 6K. Some of the Rs were much weaker, with surprising variance from car to car.

Sounds like you got a great sample with 2 second 0-60 times. Congrats!

 

They all have the same pulley.

 

Obviously with 28K there is no way of knowing. The weakest car by far was an R with almost 50k miles. Yes I know, that's scary for the long run.

Hopefully it's not the 550 tune, but is it also coincidence that the two strongest cars were a very low mileage S and a likely pulley'd S?

As I drove more, I wondered if the 550 tune could already be experiencing blow by with age. Its another reason I bought an 8S, the highest mileage Rs were the weakest cars of the bunch.

 

I had almost placed an order on Amazon for one of these pedal thingamajigs. It was on special with 2 bottles of super hair tonic to cure baldness and a packet of Libido-Max performance extender.

Now I'm beginning to wonder if the latter two highly rated products might not do what they claim?

 

Different thing but I got a TMC autoflash to try to fix dreadful DCT lag in my daughter's MiTo (terrible lag if you slowed to say 10kmh for an intersection then put your foot down, as though it was stuck in 3rd). It worked and made it far less dangerous. Someone on this forum said that they dont work or might cause damage, all I can say is that you can now go to join traffic without worrying as much about being smashed in the side or the ****, so I'm happy to take the risk.

 

Good deal. Ignore naysayers who've never used what they bash. That's an insecurity complex where they need to tell themselves they got a better deal than any other. One guy here claims his F-Type does 0-60 in 2 seconds. Funny right? Just humor them and enjoy your new performance!

 

 

NO you are 100% wrong, and if you bothered to TEST things you might have the slightest clue.

It is clear you do NOT base anything on facts, so arguing facts with you is.... wait for it.....




How do people end up like this in modern society?

REPEAT AFTER ME:

THERE IS NO LAG IN THE PEDAL

Say it until your beliefs align with facts.

What is your formal education and profession by the way? Just a theory I have.

 

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