Surging & flickering cruise light

[dancote]

I just completed the install on my wife's cabriolet, my third install.

When I took it out for a test drive I noticed that the car was surging with the CC engaged. When I checked the CC light on the stalk, I saw that it was flickering / going out momentarily every time the car surged.

I did see the other post that had a similar problem but I saw no mention of the CC light going on & off.

Regards,

Dan

[admin]

Hi Dan,

I'm going to need more information and clarification.  Because from what you've written it could be explained as normal behavior - but of course I'd expect that you would know what "normal" is because you've used the product.

To this point, ever time someone uses the word "surging", which I would use to describe significant fluctuations of the pedal (picture yourself repeatedly pushing the throttle all the way to the floor and then letting off completely), it sounds like its really just tiny pedal corrections while it attempts to maintain speed.  So please clarify what you mean by "surging".

When you say "[the LED] was flickering / going out momentarily..." I think you mean its doing its slow flash.  The LED should only ever do one of four things:  1) its off; 2) its on; 3) its flashing quickly (indicating stuck button and the cruise won't work at this point); 4) its flashing slowly (indicating normal operation but at the exact moment, the cruise is not able to maintain speed).

So if it is #4 (slowly flashing) then there's no correlation with the "surging" exactly... its just flashing.  So I guess I have to wonder if your test was simply this:  you were going downhill and gravity was the primary contributor to your speed such that the cruise can't maintain speed (since it only controls gas pedal, not brakes) so the light flashes to warn you that you're currently going faster than the set speed and there's nothing the cruise can do about that.  Its possible that the steepness of the hill was having the cruise go between "off" and "slightly on" and that can, of course, feel a bit jerky.

Of course, if you've tested it extensively and it is doing the same thing up hill or whatever, then that's probably not the case.

If you leave the cruise off, does everything behave as normal?

Art

[dancote]

Sorry,

My post was premature. This was a simple case of installer (me) error. When I went back out to check things, I found that one of the wires I plugged into the red connector had popped out.

My goof also resulted in 2 error codes: P2121 and P2138 that my Scangauge can't clear so I'm off to sc Seattle today to get that done. Sigh. Both of these are related to throttle position sensing I believe.

Feel free to remove this topic unless you think someone will get some benefit from my experience.

Regards,

Dan

[admin]

Your Scangauge should be able to clear both of those codes.  But they may not clear if the problem hasn't actually been resolved.  From my limited experience with the Scangauge, most of the time when something won't clear its because the engine is running.  The gauge will read a code when it is running but it can't clear any.  You have to turn the car off, wait about a minute, power it back on (but no ignition) and then clear them.  But there's really nothing special about those codes (or any P code) and they should clear without having to go to the dealership.

Art