Date:         Sat, 15 Feb 2003 00:23:38 -0500
Reply-To:     David Brodbeck <gull@CYBERSPACE.ORG>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         David Brodbeck <gull@CYBERSPACE.ORG>
Subject:      Re: Raining-no cruise control
Comments: To: ian Butler <ian@BLUEMOON.HPLX.NET>
In-Reply-To:  <Pine.LNX.4.33.0302141325150.13998-100000@bluemoon.hplx.net>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Fri, 14 Feb 2003, ian Butler wrote:

> The last car I drove with cruise was a 1995
> Econoline, and that sucker was squirrely at best.  It had a lethargic
> reaction time that made for a rollercoaster-like speed drift combined with
> eventual violent downshifts.  (Instead of shifting from 4-3 immediately on a
> hill to keep the van at 75, it'd wait till speed slipped to 70 and shift 4-2
> -- made quite a racket and threw everybody around but good.)

My '90 Econoline had an even more amusing problem.  The cruise would keep
opening the throttle, but before it got to the transmission kickdown point
it would reach a point where the manifold vacuum was too low for the
vacuum-driven cruise control servo to pull the throttle open any further!
At that point the speed would just keep dropping until it got 10 mph
below the set point, at which point the cruise control would disengage.

             _ _
  __ _ _   _| | |  | David M. Brodbeck (N8SRE)              Ypsilanti, MI
 / _` | | | | | |  +-----------------------------------------------------
| (_| | |_| | | | @ cyberspace.org
 \__, |\__,_|_|_| "Everything is linear if plotted log-log with a fat
 |___/             magic marker." -- Mar's Law