I did try a chip from a company who's name I can't remember, it was something like AMD, but not exactly that b/c of course that's a different maker of a whole different kind of chip. Anyway, it didn't do anything for the throttle problem, although the power gain was surprising for a non-turbo.

In the end I had Audi buy my car back from me, and the research was a big part of how I managed that.

As the buyback was going through, two supposed solutions emerged. One I didn't pursue b/c I was burned out. The other I half-pursued. The first was that supposedly another chip "solved the problem". I didn't really believe it, people on the forums really like to shoot their mouths off and try to be an authority on things. A couple of the people who claimed that it worked were people I had come to respect, but not necessarily people who I believed had a full appreciation of the problem itself.

As a side note, I did talk to an engineer at APR (Brett) about trying to solve the throttle problem. At the time his take was that they wouldn't go anywhere near throttle control b/c of liability issues, but that doesn't mean they never did, I don't know.

The other solution that emerged that I did play with a little bit was a trick/stunt that a guy came up with. Somebody somehow observed that when the clutch was pressed, the accelerator/throttle relationship became linear - but for a maximum of 10 seconds or something like that. So he rigged up a relay tied into the clutch activation sensor (which in most cars does nothing more than trigger cruise control to disable), that basically created the appearance (to the ECU) that the clutch was being pressed for 9 seconds at a time, and then being lifted for a fraction of a second in between.

This seemed like a lot of work only for a chance that things would improve, but it turned out there was a shortcut way to test it out. There is a fuse that you can pull that has a side effect of also giving you the linear throttle behavior. I believe it is the ABS fuse. Obviously you won't drive around permanently with this fuse out, but it does let you find out what the car will be like to drive if you do the clutch sensor relay stunt. The fuse-pull has massive drawbacks (5000 rpm readline, 50mph top speed, no ABS, and no brake-force distribution control (i.e. can cause rear wheels to lock up long before fronts), but again the idea is not to drive around like this long-term. I should warn you that when you pull this fuse, you will trigger a Check Engine Light, and the ECU will record some fault codes that your dealer will see. If your car is still under warranty, then you probably want to make sure you have a line on a VAG-COM or similar way to clear these codes before your dealer sees the car. The CEL will go away on its own after you put the fuse back, but the fault codes will still be recorded if you don't clear them. Or you could just play dumb with the dealer, and maybe admit that you suspected a blown fuse and might have pulled the wrong one or something like that. Generally as long as you are reporting that the car is behaving properly, they will just clear the codes themselves and forget about it.

What I found with the ABS fuse stunt is that there are real reasons Audi did the crap they did with the throttle. All the BS about such a powerful engine being hard to drive is legitimate, and it's why back in the 80's, car magazines got professional drivers to do road tests for all the exotics (ferrari's, lamborghinie's, etc) even though they did not outperform this S4 today, and yet they don't hire pro's to test the S4. It actually is difficult to drive the engine smoothly, in the same way you'd expect from any manual transmission, before all this technology got in the way. For example, if you pull your foot part-way off the throttle quickly while in gear, you can initiate hobby-horsing - a bouncing back & forth caused by the inertia on your body making your foot bounce on the throttle, and then that bounce causing another bounce, etc. The effect w/ a 340HP V-8 is drastic and violent. But you can learn to overcome it. Also, the engine's natural power delivery is not perfectly smooth. There are bumps in the power curve that are uncomfortable, and if you're driving at the limit, could cause loss of control. This was also true with most engines back in the days when throttles were mechanical . Again, this is an effect you can learn to overcome if you're inclined to do so. The upside is that the engine's throttle response is instantaneous, dramatic, and completely predictable. You really could race the car like this and not have a computer second guess you and mess you up.

To make a long story short, as hard as the car is to drive well with Audi's electronics in the way, it is harder to learn to drive it well without them. However, the main difference is that you actually *can* learn to drive it well without them, whereas you can't learn to drive it much better than on day one the way they designed it, because you are working against factors that you can't perceive or monitor.

If I had kept my car, I probably would have done the clutch throttle relay thing. Driving the car w/ the ABS fuse pulled was so much fun that I often did it despite the ridiculous drawbacks.