My Cruise Control is trying to kill me!!

Cacher123 · **Posted:** Sat Feb 25, 2012 4:17 pm

1st let me say - 210,000 miles - 10 years old - 2003 Renegade
Front drive shaft has been removed (freaked jeep out when I brought it in for an oil change and told the csr service rep "Are you sure? It was there when I brought it in!")

Anyway - Cruising with the CC on, set at about 60ish, come up a hill and the Jeep accelerates to compensate but then I realize that it continues to accelerate past where it was set. Hit the brake - nothing happens, still accelerating, now doing about 70. :shock:

Tap the CC off - nothing happens, hit the brake harder, same thing. :shock:

Now I'm doing over 75 so I decide my choices are:
-Slam on the brake and hold it thus probably doing some damage someplace (burning out brakes, trashing tranny, whatever) :dead:

-Turn off the ignition resulting in loss of power brakes and steering, or :grim:

-Throw it into neutral and hope it disengages before the engine goes nuclear :shock:

I chose the last one! Flicked it into neutral and then immediately back into drive. The revs went off the scale for a quick second but it did drop out of CC.

After the adrenalin wore off I called my brother who suggested the cable was stuck. Didn't sound likely but I checked it and then lubed the hell out of it. Gingerly used the CC a couple times after that with no issues but then about a month later it did the same thing. This time I went for the quick neutral drop and it again fixed the issue.

Not to be one to let things go, I again went back to using CC (only on wide open highways without my wife in the car though!)

Sure enough, couple weeks later - Bingo! :shock:

This time however, dropping it into neutral and out again three times didn't help (luckily I was set at like 50 and just hangin out cruisin). I jumped off on a long exit ramp and killed the engine (never did that in a vehicle before so I had no idea what would happen).
Actually surpised that the steering was still easy though the brakes became harder. :BANANA:

Once I was pulled to the shoulder and breathing again, I restarted the car and the engine started screaming! WTF!! :banghead:

Shut it off again, let it sit for about 10 minutes and then it ran fine.

Haven't used the CC since then (except for once when I flicked it on out of habit but quickly flipped it back off).

I have done no mods to the engine or drive train, most of my miles are highway. Regular maintenance, oil change every 3500 like a religion and NO idiot lights or codes thrown.
Over the years have changed the radiator, Fan, AC Compressor, Blower resistor, Fan controller, other stuff that's worn out but nothing just prior to the CC issue and up to that point I was using it on a daily basis for my commute.
It does burn about a qt of oil every 600 miles or so, but hey it does have 200K on it!
And it runs a little rough under very light throttle as its coming up through the revs, smooths out once past light throttle.
Everything else works fine.

Any one have any ideas??? :?:

Help me please as I don't want to turn into a poorly guided potential cruise missle swerving through daily traffic looking for a run off ramp! :banghead:

sota · **Joined:** Fri Aug 07, 2009 7:44 pm **Posts:** 379

you should have a 2nd throttle cable attached to the throttle body. it runs to a vacuum servo that pulls on the cable. go find that transducer and inspect it thoroughly. it sounds to me like it's getting stuck. it's supposed to be vacuum pulls the cable and an internal spring pushes it back. guess it's possible the spring broke. or the cable is getting stuck in the housing. you could remove it from the throttle body and see if it binds when you push-pull it.

in addition there's normally an electrically controlled solenoid that's used to control the amount of vacuum applied to the servo. it's possible that's not correctly venting and forcing excess vacuum to be applied to the servo.

Cacher123 · **Posted:** Tue Mar 06, 2012 7:47 pm

Thanks. I'll try to check it out. Any idea what those parts are actually called so I can look em up in my repair man.?

My Cruise Control is trying to kill me!!

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