Gernby

I've been autocrossing and tracking my cars for 17 years, but I've never been able to heel-toe at all. Even if I'm sitting in my car while it's parked, I have a very hard time twisting my right foot in a way that I can coordinate the brake pedal and gas pedal.

Now that I have a DBW S2000 (and love it), I've been thinking about tapping into the DBW harness to connect a "throttle blip button". Basically, I would measure the amount of resistance that the throttle pedal has at ~20% throttle, then calculate what a parrallel resistor would need to be to deliver that through the button. I would probably mount the button on the back side of my steering wheel so that I can easily press it with my left hand without letting go of the wheel. I would also put a switch in the circuit so that the button would be disabled during daily driving.

Do you guys have any input on this? Do you think that a set throttle point will work, or do you think it would need to provide some sort of variable control?

PedalFaster

The throttle blip part of a heel-toe isn't a precision movement by any means, so a set throttle point should work.

Having said that, have you really done everything you can to learn how to heel-toe? Even if you install a heel-toe button in your S2000, you're out of luck if you drive someone else's car.

Some people toe-heel, so to speak -- they blip the brake with their heel instead of their toe. Sounds awfully difficult to me, but if your ankle just won't bend in the direction required for traditional heel-toeing, it may be worth a shot.

Edit: Typo fix - the normal way to heel-toe is with your toe on the brake and the outside of your foot on the gas, not the other way around as I implied in my coffee-deprived original post.

99SH

Sounds like a cool idea. A push button solely won't do the trick, unless you plan on holding the button for the duration of the blip.

If you tap the button momentarily, the signal will come & go so quickly nothing will happen. You need to place a latch in the circuit (which is very easy to do).

Gernby

It sounds like I could just be doing it wrong, since I thought heel-toe meant that you push on the brake pedal with the "normal" part of the foot (near your toes), and twist your heel over to push on the gas pedal. I have a VERY hard time twisting my foot that way.

If the correct way is to use my heel on the brake and use my toe to push the gas, then that could be easier. However, it seems like you would need small feet to do that. If I put my heel on the brake pedal, I think my toes are going to be up in the wires and crap. I wear size 12's shoes.

I would not want to put a latch circuit for the blip button. That seems like that would be asking for trouble. I also don't know what I would use to trigger the latch to "let go" of the throttle.

PrOsPeCt S

I do the toe toe, but I bought wider pedeals and that made a huge difference.

ZDan

Ack, no, you don't use your heel on the brake! Use the rightside ball of your foot (the part behind your bigger toes) on the brake, and the right side of your foot on the throttle.

It's not really "heel/toe", more leftside/ball of foot on brake, rightside of foot on throttle.

A friend of mine in COMSCC rigged a pushbutton throttle-blipper that works pretty well for him. Basically a solenoid acting on a linkage to the throttle, that flops out of the way and is inactive except when he hits the button. This way he gets a *consistent* amount of throttle blippage, so the the timing for declutch/downshift/clutch isn't screwed up by inconsistent amount of throttle blip.

WynnS123

No you were thinking about it correctly the first time. I think PedalFaster meant to say that some people blip the THROTTLE with their toe instead of their heel as an alternate way of doing it. The conventional heel-toe is toes on the brake, and heel blipping the throttle.

You can also try adding wider pedals or bending the pedals closer together that way you can just have the left half of your foot on the brake and the right half blipping the throttle.

WynnS123

Lol, you guys beat me to it.

IntegraR0064

For a while I thought you really had to twist, but you don't. If you just have your foot at a slight angle, and you're pressing the brake all the way on the right side of it, it should be pretty easy in the S2000. Some cars it's much harder, but that was one of the first things I noticed about the S2000 is the pedals are very close and they're the right height compared to each other where it works well.

All that being said, it sounds like a good idea if you really can't do the foot thing. I also agree that you should not have a set latch, since you'll have to blip varying amounts depending on the shift. Just have it be a momentary push button, so you would hold it for a short time just like you would hold the throttle pedal for a short time.

dan_uk

its hard to do at first on the street its easier when you are on a track and on the brakes hard

I bent the gas pedal over nearer the brake a bit and that helped