Hypertech REACT Revisited

It is not often that I feel compelled to revisit a product in a positive way but I am so in love with Hypertech’s REACT drive-by-wire throttle controller that I had to write about it again after living with it for a couple of months in all sorts of conditions and weather.  Probably one of the reasons why is that Toyota’s drive-by-wire throttle calibration in the 2010 Tundra is pretty bad, way too sensitive with an exaggerated throttle swell, all made much worse by the responsive TRD Supercharger.  The Supercharger makes things really awful with its big injection of power right off of idle.

The truck was too jumpy which made maneuvering in parking lots, hooking up trailers, driving off-road, and driving in the rain annoying.  Even in normal street driving, when making turns from a dead stop the jumpy throttle would shoot you into traffic, then cause you to burn out, then the traction control would activate, the truck would bog, then the truck would either go into a jump bog, jump bog oscillation or just totally bog for several seconds. A super lame thing when oncoming cars are barreling down on you fast.

When driving off-road the same thing would happen when hitting bumps, the bump would move your throttle foot sending the car into a super annoying jump bog cycle.  The limited slip differential really helps by giving a lot more traction to reduce traction control activation but it would still happen quite frequently. Deactivating the traction control eliminated the cycling of the traction control, but the car defaults to TC on with every key cycle, and turning the traction control off requires holding the button down for 5 seconds and you often get lazy and don’t bother.  The limited slip and turning off the traction control still doesn’t help smoothness while parking or hitching a trailer either.

So like I said, installing the react was a piece of cake.  It just takes a few minutes.  The hardest thing was getting the stock plug off and getting better double-stick tape to get the mount to stick to the dash.

Now that I have lived with the REACT, one of the good things is I have definitely gotten a mileage increase of about 0.8 mpg over many tanks of gas.  My worst gain was 0.2 mpg but that was when I was fiddling around with the unit a lot.  I found that I like the economy setting with about 2 clicks of gain for dry conditions and straight up in the middle for the rain. I used to bang into the traction control all the time in the rain, easily around corners and that let me tell you is so infuriating.  With the REACT, I now have enough control to where I can hold the throttle at the edge of traction control activation and I feel that now the traction control is an assist instead of a hindrance!  You can also do this in the dry.  In either case, now when turning from a dead stop you can actually scoot out pretty well in a predictable way.