[928uk] Kickdown confession

[Adrian Langford]

It’s possible my kick down hasn’t been working in the way it’s designed for years, and I hadn’t realised!

In my defence m’lud, all my cars have always been manual with the exception of my S4 and its predecessor. I’m not a heavy footed driver, but sometimes for the heck of it I’d mash the throttle pedal and the thing would kick down (especially after a JDS EZK remap early in my ownership, which made it more eager to change down). What I probably missed was that the transmission was simply changing down, not being forced into lower gear when the kick down button was operated.

Somehow I’d noticed recently that pushing the throttle down slowly to the floor wasn’t resulting in kick down, so I burrowed into the footwell to find that at full throttle, the arm operating the button was just touching the button, but not able to depress it further to generate the electrical signal for kick down. The position of that arm is dictated by a simple threaded bar which connects the pedal to its bracket. After removing two bolts attaching pedal to floor, you can flip it round so as to disconnect a ball and socket joint attaching the pedal to the bracket. All I had to do was undo a locknut then adjust a nut to give the pedal a 1/2” or so extra travel.

After refitting the pedal, she now kicks down in the correct way — when pushing pedal to floor then a bit further to operate switch. It can scare the daylights out of you in a good way!

No idea how long it’s been like this. Maybe the ten years I’ve owned her? Feel a bit daft confessing this anyway.

Mine can’t be the only 928 to have this misadjustment, so if you’re trying to puzzle out a kick down problem it may be worth checking if all operates mechanically as it should first!

Adrian