During a recent 1500 mile road trip I got increasingly annoyed with the tiny bit of lag in the throttle of my 2004 SE and wondered if it's normal (the lag, not getting annoyed).
My last car - a jeep - had an amazingly sensitive and light-feeling gas pedal that you could easily blip the engine with. Tap it and you take off. The 4Runner's gas pedal by comparison is like a slug. At a green light I hit the gas and there's a brief lag before I surge off the line. At speed on the freeway I press the pedal harder to pass and it still takes a while for the damn car to accelerate.
To get decent freeway acceleration I seemingly have to stomp on the gas, which throws the tranny into a tizzy. To accelerate at low speed I also have to stomp a bit, which results in downshift and surge. I'm not an aggressive driver but just cannot seem to make fine adjustments to speed quickly, as is often necessary in city driving. It seems to be a choice between surging or barely accelerating at all, and all with a half-second lag.
Is this lag and lack of overall throttle sensitivity a typical feature of the electronic throttle control? Is it a Toyota thing? Or is it a "me" thing?!
My last car - a jeep - had an amazingly sensitive and light-feeling gas pedal that you could easily blip the engine with. Tap it and you take off. The 4Runner's gas pedal by comparison is like a slug. At a green light I hit the gas and there's a brief lag before I surge off the line. At speed on the freeway I press the pedal harder to pass and it still takes a while for the damn car to accelerate.
To get decent freeway acceleration I seemingly have to stomp on the gas, which throws the tranny into a tizzy. To accelerate at low speed I also have to stomp a bit, which results in downshift and surge. I'm not an aggressive driver but just cannot seem to make fine adjustments to speed quickly, as is often necessary in city driving. It seems to be a choice between surging or barely accelerating at all, and all with a half-second lag.
Is this lag and lack of overall throttle sensitivity a typical feature of the electronic throttle control? Is it a Toyota thing? Or is it a "me" thing?!
Since its not a direct mechanical connection there is going to be a small delay while the TPS (throttle position sensor) input is fed into a CPU and processed with the other inputs, then the signal is output to the throttle servo. To increase response on the highway while passing try manually downshifting to 4th before nailing it, then all you have to wait for is the downshift to 3rd for the real power to come on, rather than waiting for the 5-4-3 downshift, which to me, is annoying.
Passing certainly took me some time to get used to. About half the delay seems to be the throttle and the other half seems to be the tranny calculating how to downshift itself and then doing a double downshift. Now I just downshift myself before attempting to pass, which makes life a little easier. Still not Jeep speed tho.
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