So,
I have been having a rather interesting relationship with my cruise control system and would like to see if anyone knows of any obvious things to look for.

2000 EX Coupe
D16Y8
Auto
Completely Stock
Non-ABS
Somewhere around 160k on the clock

It has been cold lately here in Wisconsin, anywhere from -10 to +20 degrees. In the summer when it's plenty warm out, cruise control works perfectly. I have had the car for two winters now and so far each one the cruise control acts weird. When I get up in the morning and go to work, after I get on the freeway I will set cruise control for the first time, the freeway is about 3 minutes from my house, so the motor is still not fully warmed up by the time I get there unless I remote start the car before hand.

Anyway, after I set cruise control for the first time, I will let off and nothing will happen, it's as if it's not even turned on. Under normal conditions I can always feel the servo grab the pedal about a second after I request a speed. The green light on the dash remains on when it's supposed to be. If I let the car slow down any more than maybe 5 or 10 mph, it will begin downshifting which sometimes scares the **** out of me because I had the same thing happen to me when the transmission blew up about a year ago. Not sure why it does this, however I would assume that it is just assuming that the servo is pulling on the pedal normally.

Consequently, I have been setting the cruise control and then manually keeping the car at the speed of which I originally requested with my foot. After about 3 minutes of manually keeping it moving, I will feel it start to grab. However, it will keep going until about 5-10mph faster than what I originally requested, then back off fully, as if I turned it off. Once it slows down to the requested speed, it will grab again and the cycle repeats itself for another 5 minutes or so, going faster and slowing down and faster and slowing down, until finally it actually is able to maintain its speed smoothly.

Can anyone think of anything obvious that I should be looking for? I don't know much about the cruise systems on these cars, all I know is that there is a big diaphragm that the cable goes into, so I'm sure it's vacuum assisted. As far as I can tell the car has no vacuum leaks since it idles smoothly and it is pretty much silent under the hood when running aside from the fans starting up here and there.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Let me know if I'm missing any information here.

 

i had a similar problem.
tried replacing the cable reel
and found the lower connection
was loose, nothing actually
wrong with the reel itself.
you could also try testing the
cc unit on the firewall.
if you need the free shop manual
just pm me, cant post it here or it's a paddlin...