So, which is better? Pleople who have it argue for it and people who don't argue against it. I know there's more to it than just replacing the throttle cable with an electronic actuator. APR told me DBW is more accepting to larger mods than NDBW but I read on a recent post the exact opposite. Who knows the truth?

 

Anyone?

 

This may not help, cause I'm not sure this is the same application, not sure how the DBW that you install would act.

I have an 04 S4 with DBW. Not all that happy with it....it is not terrible, but it seems to, in conjunction with the ecu, make decisions that are not what I would want. I get the feeling that it tries to 'smooth' everything out a bit. As an example, there is a .4 second delay when you jump on the accelerator at 100%. I believe there is a small delay in how it deaccelerates as well.

Right now I am having a problem when driving in heavy traffice...15-30mph in second gear...no smoothness at all, throttle is very touchy.


So...I'm not sure if this is the reaction you would have, but I'm not a big fan.

 

that's pretty much it i think, dbw is electronic and is controlled by the ecu, where as drive-by-cable is completely mechanical

 

Yea, I can pull my throttle body open myself thank you very much. As long as your going with non custom stuff, like kits like apr or pes or giac/apr/revo, etc it wont make a difference, but if you custom with programming that isnt exact the dbw will close the throttle body if it doesnt see what it wants. I prefer to do that myself if I dont see/hear what I like

 

Actually dbw is very acceptable of custom programming. I sat in a 2000 dbw A4 a while back with that had a t28 in it and the thing was totally custom tuned - he was making changes on the spot. The thing was a beast.

The problem with DBW is that if you want to do anything to it, you have to program it. Making simple mechanical changes like you would to a NDBW will have different results.

I have had both throttle types and unless you are going custom, there is hardly a difference at all. If you are going custom, you have to go different routes, depending on what you have, but one is not really better than the other.

 

yea but what I meant was you would have a hard time running a gt28rs on ko3 programming without the ecu closing the tb, you can go custom with custom tuning, and be fine but you cant halfass the tuning like you can on dbc

 

yep - thats kinda what I meant too - with DBW you actually have to go all the way and tune the programming instead of just throwing hardware at it.

 

Well, I've got plans for a turbo upgrade in the future so I guess DBC will be better for me. And to think I had been holding out for a DBW.

 

lol - lots of people have turbo upgrades on dbw. But it's like Tom and I say, it takes a more specific setup to get a dbw to run perfectly.