Tips for heel-toe in our cars?

[StrayBassist]

Hey, I'm a long-time mountain road racer and am starting to take my TDI up to some twisties to battle my girlfriend's supra and my friend's lancer... (really, to be the camera car lol)

The throttle pedal is so far back, does anyone here who tracks/races their TDI have any tips on heel-toe rev matching in their car? My feet are on the bigger side for gals at a size 11/12 but I still struggle to find a way to do it. Thanks in advance!

 

[Lug_Nut]

Shorten the brake push rod and add a stop block on brake pedal return stroke?
Other than adding spacer blocks to the 'low' pedal there isn't much to do for heel-toe, and is not all that effective on low revving, boost delay, TDI just based on my amateur auto-x trials with pedal blocks.

Concentrate on the job at hand. You're primarily a camera operator for THEM to look better. The loss of 1/10 second on YOUR shift is not critical.

 

[oilhammer]

How do you "rev match" via the heel-toe method on a drive by wire car that has the ECU cut power when it sees the brake pedal input?

 

[Matt-98AHU]

How do you "rev match" via the heel-toe method on a drive by wire car that has the ECU cut power when it sees the brake pedal input?

It doesn't cut power right away. It has to see you holding the throttle and brake for at least a whole second before it'll cut throttle. It *will* allow a quick throttle blip to rev match.

I've been doing it for 20 years in these cars

To the OP: I found I've had to use the ball of my foot to stay on the brake pedal and pivot over to use my heel on the throttle to blip it. Also wearing size 12s.

Even so, it is a bit tricky to maintain consistent brake pedal pressure while doing it because of how far your foot is moving to get to the throttle, especially if you're braking hard.

I'm usually not, because it's my daily... it's more of I'm slowing to make a turn to another street and want to rev match into second gear so I can get on the throttle the moment my right foot is off the brake, so I'm not exactly going extreme on the brake pedal pressure like I'm racing it.

 

[Vince Waldon]

I believe it can be completed coded out as well, as part of a tune.

Very helpful on my 2001 with an almost-completely-gone second gear synchro

 

[Matt-98AHU]

I believe it can be completed coded out as well, as part of a tune.

Very helpful on my 2001 with an almost-completely-gone second gear synchro

It can be, yeah. But it's good to know that the programmers do allow throttle blips to happen for those of us with transmissions that still shift OK, so such measures aren't wholly necessary.

I do like/understand the safety aspect of the throttle cutout in case of a failure of one component or the other (either the brake switch or the throttle position sensor itself). At the same time, the throttle cut out can be overridden if you release the throttle and re-apply as well, but that can be a little tricky to manage in the moment.

To be fair, the throttle pedal does have two position sensors sending opposing signals. One increases voltage while the other decreases. So, if just one of the two sensors is mis-reporting you get a correlation fault and you go into throttle limp home mode as well... So if there is a fault where one sensor is reporting you're pressing the throttle when you're really not, chances are good that the second sensor won't correlate with that and you get a throttle cut out anyway.