My 2000 Honda Civic VP didn’t come with a cruise control. At least one of the cars I have owned had a cruise control (the old Chevy Lumina). And I love having cruise control in the various rental cars I have had.
I have thought for a long time about getting cruise control installed on my car. I considered buying one and installing it myself. Or possibly having it professionally installed.
I searched around for local places that install cruise controls, but surprisingly, there don’t seem to be many places that do it. I did find one though. I called them and found the cost would be close to $380. Ouch! The brand they install is the Rostra Cruise Control. They also claimed they installed it to look like it was factory installed. I did a search, and the Rostra cruise controls seemed to be good.
I looked into the costs of buying a Rostra cruise control, so I could install it myself. But when I looked at the cost, it wasn’t much more to have it professionally installed. I went back and forth on getting one. My wife and I do a lot of long drives, and we always use my car. I also make a 70+ mile drive every weekend for my karate classes.
I decided to get one figuring I will use it alot. I called and set up an appointment for last Friday morning. I arranged to take the morning off from work.
I brought my car to the shop and was there when they openned at 8am. I killed time while they worked on my car by walking to McDonalds for breakfast, and hitting the local used book store. They were finished at 10:30. I checked out the control, and I didn’t think it looked factory installed. I paid, and headed home. I tried it out on the freeway, and it seemed to work pretty well. I was home for a bit, then had to head to work. I don’t normally take the freeway to work, but decided to go that way so I could try out the cruise control. I also wanted to use my Scangauge II to check my gas milage for the trip. About 5 minutes after setting the cruise control, it disengaged by itself. *scratching head* I reset it, and a minute later it disengaged again. It disengaged about 5 times in the 13 mile drive. I was kind of pissed to have spend close to $400 and gotten this. I called the guy, and he described it as interesting. I didn’t think it was too interesting. The guy said stop back at the shop. I snuck out of work early, and headed for the shop. The guy completely replaced the Rostra stuff. The unit, the controller, and re-soldered everything. He took it out for a testdrive, and said it still disengaged, and thought it might be confilicting with my Scangauage. I emailed Rostra to ask them about this, but they haven’t replied.
I did a couple drives over the weekend, both with and without the Scangauge plugged in. It still disengaged a couple times. It did disengage both with and without the Scangauge plugged in. So I am pretty sure it doesn’t have anything to do with the Scangauge. But at least it wasn’t disengaging every few minutes like it had been. I called the guy back, and he said to bring it back, and he will trying using a different power source.
I am planning on using it this weekend for a trip down to Pennsylvania. It will be nice to have cruise control. We also have a drive to eastern New York in a couple weeks.
I will hopefully get a chance to get into the shop tonight or tomorrow to get the power connections changed.

Posted by RJ in Travel on July 2nd, 2008 |