Anyone who knows anything about engine management systems will know that Throttle adaptation is used when replacing the throttle potentiometer and has nothing but a short term effect on throttle pedal calibration.
The ECU has some base calibration to fit all throttle pot installs, but it also has a self end travel calibration to make sure each individual install works as it should.
I'll explain that in more detail.
Imagine your throttle pedal has 45 degrees of movement. This is from rest position to buried into the carpet full throttle.
Mounted on this throttle pedal is a potentiometer that's job is to feed the throttle pedal angle to the ECU to represent power request from the driver.
Now, the throttle potentiometer is not a perfect 45 degree item. It's probably got a measurement angle of 90 degrees. Whatever it's range is, it's safe to say it's more than the pedal travel angle. For a reason.
Also, although it mounts in a particular way, the reading of both end positions are not going to be the same for every installation. They also engineer in so that there is float on either end of the pot to absolutely make sure that the pot is within its measurement range. In simple terms, the zero angle on the pedal will always be a positive angle on the pot.
So what we end up with in a new installation is a throttle pedal at zero degrees deflection, but the pot with a positive value. Let's say 15 degrees. If we deflect the pedal the full 45 degrees of mechanical movement, the pot will go from 15 degrees to (15+45) 60 degrees. So a pedal angle of 0-45 will equate to a pot angle of 15-60.
Now, the ECU is base programmed to have a smaller range than this to catch all install outcomes. Let's say it's default program is to work with 30-50 throttle pot range. But it is also taught to self calibrate.
So when the ECU is matched up with the throttle pot, it sees a low value of 15 already, not the 30 it was taught was the lower limit. It adjusts its adaptation to 15 for zero throttle pedal position. But as no one has operated the throttle pedal yet, it still thinks full throttle is 50 on the potentiometer.
The ECU scales zero-to-full automatically between the adaptation values.
So until someone presses the throttle pedal into the carpet, the ECU will always think that 50 is full throttle.
That's why adaptation feels like it does something. It has a shorter range (temporarily) giving more throttle per degree of pedal travel. But the second you apply full throttle? Yes it's back to how it should be, with an adaptation of 15-60 like the mechanical install dictates.
Conclusion: throttle adaptation is the epitome of fake news.
