Hey Folks,
Thanks to all that take the time to help the rest of us out with their experience. I can't thank you folks enough! I have a 1998 LS400 and I noticed on the forum that many of the postings pertaining to a '98 LS400 talk about drive by wire. I'm supposed to have a '98 but mine is a cable. I have the 4.0L engine. What's up with that? Is it the 6-cyl that is drive by wire while the V8 is a cable? Just curious. Any thoughts? Thanks!

Chris

 

It is drive by wire, just that everything's built into the throttle body as one unit instead of how it's normally done with an electronic throttle pedal (accelerator pos. sensor). The sensor is on the left side of the throttle body where the throttle cable connects to it, and the motor is on the right side of it.

One nifty feature of this setup that I've never seen on any other DBW setup is that if the gas is pressed more than 3/4 of the way, the throttle is mechanically opened up to 1/4 of the way. It's a failsafe that in case the DBW system fails you can still drive under limited power. Pretty cool.\


Another thing you'll notice is if you drive it in "snow" mode, the throttle response is slowed waaay down. This isn't possible without DBW.

 

Anarchyx34, thank you for the info. It was very helpful.

Chris

 

I had the same question. Cool.

 

You mean throttle by wire yes? I think drive by wire would be scary plus with lawyers it probably won't happen any time soon

 

The technology is commonly called "drive by wire" and covers many aspects: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_by_wire

 

Now that I think about it, I stand corrected, I was confusing drive by wire with steer by wire. I guess it does take more than just steering to drive a car.

 

I think the drive by wire has two meanings: one literal the other not so.

literal definition is the "old" way, step on the accelerator pedal, which pulls open the throttle body via a metal wire.

The other definition is the "new" way: step on the accelerator pedal and an electronic position sensor interprets the location of the pedal and translates that to the analog equivalent of the "old" way.

 

uh no, DBW has always referred to an electronic throttle.

a standard throttle setup uses a CABLE. (terminology...)