Has anyone tried this product from Turner Motorsport? Is it worth the price? http://www.turnermotorsport.com/html/detail.asp?PRODUCT_ID=SPRINTBOOSTER
Discussed before not long ago, a quick search found this thread: Sprint PowerBooster. Basically, all it does is compress the throttle-position v. pedal-position curve so that wide-open throttle occurs before the pedal reaches the stop. The last 25% of your pedal travel then does nothing. It makes your throttle twitchier, making your car harder to drive smoothly and has exactly ZERO performance benefit. It is pure feel-good snake oil. You want snappier throttle response? Move your foot more. There, I just saved you $300.
Why would Turner Motor Sport sell such a worthless, "fraudulant" product. Is the money more important than their reputation? I see their full page ad in the Roundel magazine.
I put one in ... and I like it. I had my 335d leave me "out there" just one to many times. So I bought one and put it in figuring that I have 30 day's to decide if it does what I want. After a week I've decided that I do like it. It requires a bit softer foot when starting out, but I don't find it difficult to maintain speed at all (I have owned this car since December and have yet to check if the cruise control works... even with a 32 mile commute each way most of which is at + highway speeds) I have only used the sport setting as this seems to meet my needs. It definitely removes that pause that occasionally occurs when you press the pedal to start out. That was not a good thing when you are pulling out aggressively into heavy traffic... it made me feel like a sitting duck waiting for some zoom to happen. And when the zoom did happen it ripped the tires loose and I had to back off a bit. That no longer occurs with this solution. At $300+ its certainly pricey but not unreasonable. It took about 10 minutes to put it in and since it plugs in between the throttle control and the ECU then it can't possibly cause any warranty issues other than its own failure which naturally BMW will not cover. It doesn't send any signals outside of the range of the original throttle control. Everything I heard on this forum makes me believe that BMW is unwilling to give us an alternative reprogramming solution... so this one is reasonable and easily done without raising your blood pressure. I would recommend that if the throttle annoys you then try it to see if it meets your needs. I like the positive throttle control it gave me maybe you will to. Chuck
I had my mine for 2years and enjoyed it all the time. If youre in md area i can let you use mine until my new car arrives and you can make your own decesions.
Sure, you can simply exert more pressure to the throttle pedal with your foot without the Sprint Booster to achieve the relative same effect, but I found that that required much more situational awareness with regard to calculating how much pressure to apply and when and how much at any given time than I wanted to exhaust my brain power toward. The M3 Sport button presumably was to have served the same function as the Sprint Booster, but it didn't. While the Sport mode certainly helped decrease the "lag" time between depression of the fuel pedal and the moment of acceleration, there's still the annoying hesitation, which is common to many drive-by-wire vehicles. Computers eliminated the need for physical linkage between the gas pedal and the mechanism that injects the fuel-air mixture into the combustion chambers. BWM easily could have gone the extra step with its Sport mode and eliminated the bothersome acceleration "lag" time. For that matter, any car manufacturer could have. The Sprint Booster folks did, and I, for one, have found the immediate responsiveness in acceleration - without having to calculate pedal depression pressure in order to bypass the inevitable acceleration hesitation as before without the Sprint - to have made driving my M3 much, much more pleasurable - like it should have been at the outset without this assist. Depress the pedal, and off you go - without hesitation. Now, obviously, it doesn't add horsepower - no one claims it does - but it does add immediate acceleration without having to work at it like before. And for me, the comfort of knowing I no longer must be bothered by that annoying hesitation in acceleration is worth it ... in my opinion. It's a pricey component, true, but it's all a matter of personal driving preference and the enjoyment it provides.
