Cruise Control failure

[98SF19]

RIGHT after I installed LED reverse lights and tail/brake lights a few days ago, my cruise control just stopped working - no flashing "CRUISE" on the panel or anything. I checked fuses #6 and #28 in the interior junction box and they're good. As for the brake pedal switch: I read that failure will accompany brake lights not working, but my brake lights are working.

Here'e a post from TCCA about cleaning the button contacts, which I haven't yet done (just saw it tonight):
http://www.taurusclub.com/forum/98-...ow-articles/141117-cruise-control-repair.html

I'll plan on doing this tomorrow (I never realized how much I took cruise control for granted). Is there anything related to putting in the LED tailights that may be affecting the operation of the cruise control?

Thanks

 

[98SF19]

LEDs and Tail Lights connection

Well I dug around a bit more and discovered that there IS a link between tail lights and cruise control functionality. Believe it or not, it was on a Tiburon forum. When I had tail lights and high center brake lights all LEDs, cruise control did not work. I replaced one of the LED tail lights last night with the old incandescent that worked, and took the car for a spin. No cruise control. This had me worried since I'd been driving around with 1 tail light out for a while (incand.), and cruise control was working. So I decided to replace the 2 little LED 194s in the high center pod with THEIR old bulbs and leave the car alone for the night. Driving the car this morning, fingers crossed as I proceeded to engage cruise control. I tell ya what, seeing those little green letters "CRUISE" on the instrument cluster gave me a giddiness I hadn't experience since childhood. It kicked in and worked fine the whole way to work. I'm thinking I may have just not waited long enough after popping the LED tail light out. In the meantime, load resistors have been ordered.

Coincidentally, the wife's minivan needed a tail light. Hyper flash is in effect, and I took a small chunk out of the housing, but at least people will see a blinker now.

 

[stephen newberg]

I find in long highway trips I do tend to use the cruise control a fair amount. Past that, I tend to ignore it. The control system in the SHO for the cruise control is a lot more intuitive than the one in the 911 C4S, by the way. I think American manufacturers might tend to think more about how to structure it than the European makers do.

pax, smn