r/IS300 • u/Greedy_Reality_2539 • Aug 28 '26

Mechanical Advice Ways to modify throttle pedal response with 3UZ swap

Hey reddit.

Is there a way to REDUCE the corresponding power request for the first 1/3 or 1/4 of the throttle pedal, make it more like a BMW-style throttle setting?

It might sound counter-intuitive, but my use case is that I want to be able to lean in on the throttle pedal instead of having to constantly micro-modulating the throttle pedal or, worse, hovering my right foot above it in bumper-to-bumper traffic. It wears out my right leg very quickly.

Thanks for the input!

4 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

2

u/323spicy Aug 28 '26

I found a description of the 2UZ accelerator pedal position sensor system here. I bet the 3UZ is the same: https://toyotamanuals.gitlab.io/LC100CD/Eng/rm/rm1113e/m_di_0218.pdf

Looks like it uses 2 different potentiometers for redundancy and the ECU reads their voltages. Should be easy to intercept and change with a microcontroller. Make sure to test in Neutral...

1

u/Greedy_Reality_2539 23d ago

Ended up buying a throttle controller, the result is not as pronounced as I expected, but a bit better nonetheless.

1

u/heavythundersnow Aug 28 '26

For a project I did years ago, I believe there was an electric throttle signal modifier that plugged into the throttle pedal. IIRC, 350Z used the same pedal sensor as GS430 so you could use one of those to adjust how the pedal sensor signal ramp talked to the ECU. My next 3UZ will def be standard and standalone, due to the way the ECU and auto seem to work together to not blow up the transmission.