Performance throttle body...

There have been a few companies making performance bodies for the smart, although they have never really been recognised as a normal tuning method for this car.

One UK company that addressed this method was smarts'R'Us who sold them as part of their Evil Twin range. These were sold on exchange for £299.

Now, we like subtle engine modifications, so we decided to have one developed for ourselves. We supplied a unit to an Engineer along with a list of our requirements. They came back to us with the newly-tweaked body and a bill of £52 delivered (a big saving there!).

The processes carried out on the throttle body that we supplied were as follows (as stated by machinist)
• All casting, pitting & boring marks removed & smoothed.
• Internally re-profiled and highly polished.
• New butterfly fixing screws with screw-ends ground into spindle.
• Perfect horizontal opening of butterfly plate.
• Chemically cleaned.

As you can see, there is quite a difference between the old and new units.

Over the coming months we will be testing these units on a few cars, testing the reliability and actual gains they produce, so watch this space...