A year ago, my wife and I made perhaps our wisest decision in a while when we replaced a beaten and rusty BMW with a reliable Toyota. My wife’s Scion iQ has done everything she’s ever asked of it, including driving nearly 40,000 miles in a single year. It’s been bulletproof, too, aside from a really stupid failure caused by one small modification, which left the car stranded once and otherwise perpetually stuck in limp mode. The car effectively became as useful as a transportation device as a brick. Who knew wanting to go a single speed would be such a headache?
As many of our readers know, I own pretty much nothing but terrible, unreliable cars. I work from home, so nothing I own needs to run for any longer than a few hours at a time. I’ll happily buy the worst junkers in automotive history because they rarely need to go further than to the beach and back. My wife, Sheryl, has the exact opposite requirement from her cars. She drives around 40,000 miles a year for work.
Unfortunately, as Sheryl has learned the hard way, there aren’t a lot of cars that enjoy being driven hard and put away wet. The BMW E39 that we bought from the Bishop eventually began misfiring and sputtering. My poor wife also had a reliable Toyota Prius, but our friend managed to cause $14,000 in damage hitting both a curb and a deer at apparent warp speed.
Heck, my wife is so unlucky that she once had a car powered by the legendarily reliable Buick 3800 V6, yet a local shop was so incompetent in fixing it that the engine inhaled its own coolant until it windowed its block. Poor thing. Her car before that, a Chevy HHR, fried its body control module during a road trip. Even one of my Smarts tried failing on her.
Understandably, Sheryl is tired of cars dying on her. So, this time, she thought of herself as making a boring choice and getting a Toyota. But she didn’t want to just get something like an Avalon or whatever. She wanted it to be tiny and weird like my Smarts. In other words, a Scion iQ.
I tried to be brutally honest with my wife. There are about 15,700 Scion iQs in America, Scion itself is dead, and it’s unlikely we’ll find many mechanics who have even seen these cars before. Some parts might be rare and parts that are specific to the iQ might be expensive. That’s the life I live with my Smarts and my Japanese imports.
Sheryl chose the iQ, anyway. I’ve been impressed with this little car. In the past year, we’ve driven this car as far west as the Grand Canyon and as far east as North Carolina. We’ve taken the little car down historic Route 66 and it has survived giant truck tire “gators,” a minor traffic collision, and of course, nearly 40,000 miles of punishment. Toyota never engineered this car to be a road warrior, but the iQ is doing it every day without letting my wife down.
The Modification
It was during our Route 66 trip back in February that we discovered the biggest problem with using an iQ as a highway car. These cars didn’t come with cruise control, not even as an option. Yeah, my wife didn’t like the idea of 40,000 miles a year without cruise.
Thankfully, installing cruise control into countless modern cars is so easy. Many aftermarket cruise control systems tie into the car’s drive-by-wire by using a plug-and-play wiring harness that plugs into the accelerator pedal’s harness. There are cruise control systems out there that are so easy to install that they do not require any cutting or soldering, but basic tools and 15 minutes of your time.
That’s the case for aftermarket cruise control units for a variety of Toyota models, but the Scion iQ isn’t one of them. Installation of a cruise control into a Scion iQ involves the use of a plug-and-play harness, but also wiring that needs to be tapped into an existing harness. You’ll also need to drill out your steering column plastic.
Admittedly, I’ve been super busy this year, so I couldn’t give Sheryl an exact date on when I’d be able to install a cruise control unit. She really didn’t want to wait, either. Hey, I get it! So, she paid our local Toyota dealer $800 for the aftermarket cruise control system and to install it. About $315 of that cost was for the device itself.
When she got the car back she couldn’t stop talking about how the cruise control was a game-changer. I later drove the car myself and I had to agree. It’s such a simple modification, if you can even call it that, yet it makes the car infinitely more pleasurable to drive. Remember, the iQ doesn’t have a lot of ponies in its stable, so you have to give it constant accelerator pressure to keep with the Indy 500-like speeds of Illinois highways. It’s silly how much nicer it is not to have to do that.
It’s hard to say how many miles Sheryl has driven since the installation, but if I had to wager a guess, it has been maybe 15,000 to 20,000 miles. But something started getting weird.
The Dumb Failure
Three months ago, Sheryl started reporting a rather bizarre problem.
Every once in a while, the car randomly went into limp mode after misfiring. The check engine light flashed, the car lost power, and slowed down to a crawl. Thankfully, restarting the vehicle restored all functions. The issue didn’t happen again until October. Then, out of nowhere, the issue came back and it appeared both frequently and seemingly entirely at random.
I pulled the codes and found myself baffled. The vehicle recorded a misfire on every cylinder but also a P2121 “Throttle/Pedal Position Sensor/Switch Circuit Range/Performance” code. The vehicle has fresh, name-brand plugs and excellent compression on every cylinder. I couldn’t find any obvious reason for a supposed total engine misfire. Even the car’s battery tested healthy. Eventually, the reported misfires disappeared, so I’m not entirely sure what’s going on there.
What didn’t disappear was the flashing check engine light and limp mode condition. It seemed as if at least once a week Sheryl would report the car going into limp mode with the P2121 code being thrown during the event. Then, this hit a fever pitch.
One day, Sheryl left a southern Illinois courthouse to find someone actively slashing her tires. She scared off the guy before the tool went through the tire.
But then something truly confusing happened during her five-hour drive home that made us think the vandal did something else. A few minutes after she entered the highway, the engine’s revs shot to redline. She didn’t change her pressure on the pedal. Instead, it seemed the car was trying to accelerate entirely on its own. Thankfully, the car entered into a safe mode where it wouldn’t travel faster than about 10 mph while the engine was seemingly running away.
Over the phone, I instructed Sheryl to shut down the vehicle, let the computers power down, and then bring the car back online. When she did that, the car came back to life, but now the gas pedal did nothing and the car wouldn’t move. Eventually, she coaxed the car into moving, but once again it was doing redline just to go 10 mph. The car’s CVT also didn’t appear to be fond of any of this.
Something clicked in my head. I knew exactly where I’d heard of this failure before. Some Smart owners have reported similar erratic engine behavior. Usually, they’d hit the gas at a green light and the car would either sit there at idle speed and doing nothing or the engine would rev to the moon but the car would still not move. The cause was almost always traced to the installation of an aftermarket cruise control unit. At least in those Smarts, the bad solders in the control boards of those cruise control units would fail, sending all kinds of wild signals through the drive-by-wire system.
What’s interesting about these failures is that the drivers weren’t using cruise control at the time, just like Sheryl wasn’t during the above failure. However, as I said earlier, the cruise control unit is tied in line with the throttle pedal’s wiring, so if the cruise control dies or shorts out, it can interfere with the pedal.
The solution? Disconnect the cruise control harness from the pedal harness. In my experience, this solves the erratic throttle problem and limp mode issue about 95 percent of the time. Then, you either just live without cruise control or replace the faulty unit. But, usually, those Smart pedal failures didn’t happen until years after the cruise was installed. We’re talking about only months here.
Unfortunately, Sheryl was still hundreds of miles from home, far further than even AAA would have towed her. I recommended letting the car sit turned off for a while, then trying to make a run for home. Letting the car sit for a half hour or so seemed to do the trick, and Sheryl limped the car home taking backroads in case the issue happened again.
Once home, the issue hit with a vengeance, with the car starting in limp mode and having an ineffective gas pedal. The car’s check engine light and traction control off light glowed proudly. Every green light was met with the engine either trying to run away or the car doing its best impression of a brick in traffic.
Yanking the cruise control from the accelerator pedal had the immediate change of turning off the check engine light and turning traction control back on. The limp mode also went away. However, that pesky P2121 consistently returned no matter how many times we cleared the code. Part of the cruise control was still hardwired into the car, so that’s where I ended my troubleshooting. At this point, I had Sheryl use her warranty on the cruise control unit to have the dealer figure out what was going on.
I described to the dealership what the car was doing, but not what I thought the problem was. I was curious if the dealer would come to the same conclusion I did. A couple of techs at the local Toyota dealer worked through the weekend to replicate and troubleshoot the problem. The limp mode issue never showed up for them.
It’s Supposed To Do That, Right?
However, the tech who installed the cruise control found a bunch of fault codes stored in the cruise control unit itself plus that persistent P2121 from the car. Their diagnosis? The cruise control is having a failure of some kind, which sends bad signals to the accelerator pedal sensor. As for the P2121, it was found that the pedal sensor was also failing. The consensus is that the cruise control failure damaged the accelerator pedal sensor.
I did some digging around and this seems to be what other Scion iQ owners have experienced over the years, with the fix varying based on the intensity of the issue.
Unfortunately, Toyota doesn’t sell this part by itself, so you have to buy the whole gas pedal assembly to the tune of over $200 plus the labor to install it. Sheryl went ahead and paid for the work, though I’m pretty sure we could have handled it ourselves and saved on the labor costs.
At any rate, Sheryl got her car back and it’s running great, as if the pedal problem never happened. From here, the dealership says we’ll wait a week to see if the problem comes back. If it doesn’t, they’ll investigate why the cruise control failed and replace it. Thankfully that is under warranty so it’s not an extra charge. Hopefully, the replacement unit doesn’t blow up.
If this was a story that someone told me in a bar I wouldn’t have believed them. However, I’ve now seen enough aftermarket cruise controls fail in front of my own eyes and I’m not even surprised that this happened. This is just the first time I’ve seen one fail so hard it also supposedly killed the pedal it was attached to. It figures that my wife’s Toyota was bulletproof until we modified one thing on it.
So, if you happen to own a car with an aftermarket cruise control and suspiciously erratic throttle pedal behavior. I would first disconnect the cruise before throwing parts at it. Maybe your cruise control is trying to star in the next Speed movie.
(Images: Author)
Mercedes… since Sheryl drives so many miles per year for her job, y’all might just want to consider getting her an older hybrid camry. You’ll still get great gas mileage, and they have cruise control as standard. Big T has sold millions of vehicles with this hybrid powertrain, they are bulletproof, and they are cheap to repair as parts are abundant. While you might be able to continue driving the oddball cars (we love you for that!), Sheryl should probably just drive something that is very ubiquitous.
This person drives thousands of miles per year in a winter state doing a critical job.
JUST BUY A NEW RELIABLE CAR WITH A WARRANTY AND GET IT DEALER SERVICED
I’ll add things I always have: name brand (aka Michelin) tires + full sized spare in the trunk, lithium ion jump starter, 12V air compressor, packet of FlatOut as a last ditch measure), couple of snack bars and a sweatshirt. (i got more but this would be a good start)
Also don’t let anyone borrow your primary car, wtf.
This should be the obvious solution. I started buying new cars when I started driving 30-50k miles per year and potentially missing important deadline days for a broken shitbox/unscheduled mechanic visit was not an option, plus I didn’t feel like having to go through the pain of used car shopping every couple years and deal with whatever issues they might have had that needed to be fixed or sorted first nor the “now what is that noise/shake, is that smell from my car or someone else?” game.
Yeah, this. If you count on your car for money, you need to invest in it as such, as much as you’re able given your means. (I’m choosing to set aside the living to work to have a car to drive to work circular argument for this particular post. If you count on your car get a car you can count on.)
Unfortunately, she doesn’t get paid enough to buy a new car. I technically do make new car money, but healthcare is expensive. I’m about to spend $20,000 out of pocket for some necessary dental work on top of paying $900 a month for health insurance premiums and another $400 a month for medications. Last year, the big expense was paying for the surgery to remove her cancer.
One of these days she’ll get a new car, but that day is not today.
Having a reliable daily makes having project cars fun instead of a pain.
She had a Prius…and gave it away. Of course, it was the generation that had head gasket issues, so chances are it would have eventually failed too, but it still probably would have been less prolematic than anything else she’s owned.
I installed a throttle position sensor (for data acquisition) on my 2001 Audi S4 which just monitored the voltage on the potentiometer. However, the input impedance of the sensor was too low so it affected the reading by the vehicle ECU. The car would randomly accelerate and generate CELs so I quickly removed it.
My father is an auto tech (retiring this year!) and the one thing that he has made pretty clear is that pretty much anything aftermarket will mess with a car. It’s been that way forever. And it doesn’t matter how basic you think it is, it can and will cause a problem.
But worst of all is anything electrical. Even aftermarket LED bulbs swapped into the interior of a car can mess things up. He has spent days (and the car’s owner’s money) chasing issues to finally determine its an aftermarket security system, stereo system, remote start system, sunroof, lighting, you name it. As soon as I saw “aftermarket cruise control” I cringed.
By far the weirdest for me, I had LED lights (aftermarket units) in my Mustang that would inexplicably mess with the TPMS. I removed the lights and never had another problem.
yep, I’ve heard of cars that will throw codes or have their dash stop working because of aftermarket LED bulbs.
The hardest thing is that regular diagnosis goes out the window with aftermarket stuff. So, a mechanic is checking for known/suspected issues and it turns out to be something foreign introduced into the system. A good mechanic will eventually find it. But it sucks to pay 8 hours labor to find out that the ebay motors LED bulb you put in the visor light is causing the issue.
Yes, LEDs can sometimes emit RF interference that messes with lower power RF gear.
Some folks have issue with their garage door remotes after installing LED bulbs in the garage door opener.
Interference in modern cars is a big issue. My buddy worked in radio development and spent a ton of time in rural areas at the edges of AM and FM bands as they made incremental changes trying to deal with phone charging pads being added to cars. A whole bunch of shielding was needed to stop it from screwing everything up, and I’m not surprised the TPMS sensors had similar issues with interference.
Yep. I noticed the range of my keychain garage door fob was massively reduced after putting a LED bulb in. This was annoying, I had to be effectively right in front of the door for it to work, where before I could easily be 100 yards away and the door would be open by the time I got there.
GE sells a special “garage door” LED bulb that I guess has extra RF shielding. It’s also notably heavier than most LED bulbs. Swapped that in and problem went away.
As boring as they are a new corolla sedan would be excellent camouflage for Sheryl. I used to rent one whenever I had to drive from Rochester NY into downtown Detroit, and it was like an invisibility cloak the whole way. Plus, new ones are only 24K so it’s pretty hard to go wrong there.
So the little car is not permanently bricked after all? Good.
> One day, Sheryl left a southern Illinois courthouse to find someone actively slashing her tires.
what the actual fuck is wrong with people
Sometimes I wanna take a crap on the people who do stuff for craps and giggles.
it seems to me such a weird thing to do randomly. Like.. at least I get slashing your ex-boyfriends tires if he cheated on you.. i don’t support it but i get it.. Just randomly picking out a car in a parking lot to vandalize.. this escapes me, my brain simply isnt wired to understand this kind of action.
In a previous post Mercedes noted that Sheryl is a lawyer and often gets harassed, even by the local police (shocking, I know) coming to/from the courthouse.
I am still voting for giant meteor –
I’m still trying to process why on earth someone would like to slash the tires on a Scion iQ.
Well it was outside a courthouse soo…..
Sounds like an actual brick on the gas pedal would work equally well as a cruise control.
I’m sorry this happened to you. Working at a dealership for any length of time, you see what kinds of crazy failures aftermarket equipment can cause.
I was reading your story about the Wife’s car last month and as soon as you said, “the only modification I made was aftermarket cruise control,” I winced. Throttle position and pedal position sensor signals are so sensitive, it takes very little interference to completely mess up the system.
Does Toyota, or anyone else offer the actual OEM cruise control, that reports directly to the engine computer, not just faking it by altering the Accelerator pedal signal?
If I’m not mistaken, these pedals use Hall effect sensors. The modification could have caused the sensor(s) to process signals that are outside of normal operating parameters, in turn delivering feedback that was damaging all of the delicate electronics in the device or in devices connected to that device(such as the cruise control module). This is what is called a transient signal, which depending upon the nature of the signal, could even damage/destroy the software stored in the device.
NEVER work on your partner’s car! If something goes wrong, and eventually it will, now your partner is without a car and they’re mad at you.
Take it to the mechanic. And when something goes wrong, They’ll be mad at the mechanic.
Any DIY “savings” just isn’t worth it
Or make her father the “mechanic” do it, like I do. She always wants him to do it, and then I laugh when she is mad at him.
Hear hear, best couples advice ever!
I think David Tracy is slowing learning the same lesson. Slowly.
One day, Sheryl left a southern Illinois courthouse to find someone actively slashing her tires. She scared off the guy before the tool went through the tire.
It sucks how much some people just can’t stand small, efficient cars.
Must be jealously.
My “bicycle”/microcar has gotten a lot of hate in a similar vein. They probably don’t know that I can go hundreds of miles for literal pennies, and it’s probably for the best…
I didn’t know aftermarket cruise control was still a thing.
Seriously. I had a Focus and a Ranger that didn’t have cruise control, but the Ford parts catalog offered kits that included a new steering wheel and other hardware for a factory-like install using genuine parts. Of course those were not drive by wire systems, but now I’m curious if Ford still offers those kits for their drive by wire cars.
i had the dealer put on one my 2016 Suzuki aerio. it worked great for over 200,000 miles. never an issue with it.
That’s awesome. I have a chronic distrust of aftermarket electronics, but I’m glad you had a good experience with it.
i had it done by the dealer which always helps my confidence.
My dad had a dealer install aftermarket cruise control, aftermarket power windows, aftermarket power locks, and aftermarket AC in his ’88 Chevy K1500 that he bought new in April of ’88 (early build GMT-400). He should have waited for one that had that stuff from the factory. He couldn’t wait to upgrade from his rusty ’79 K10 though.
The aftermarket cruise was 7 mph off of whatever speed you set it to (I can’t remember if it was low or high). The aftermarket power windows would drop a window into the door approximately annually, requiring a new regulator/mechanism each time at a cost of hundreds of dollars. Part only, Dad installed them himself. I remember the part being delivered to our house COD, back when that was a thing. The aftermarket AC worked, just not well. It was only moderately cooler than running with the windows open. The only thing that didn’t cause trouble, were the aftermarket power locks.
Granted, this was 36 years ago now, but I definitely don’t have the same confidence you have, dealer installed or not.
Like I said though, I’m glad you had a good experience. I’d like to add cruise control to my beater ’99 Corolla, but if I do, it will be with factory/junkyard parts.
Glad you figured it out. I do agree that cruise control is almost a must now. I bought my 2006 NC Miata without it, thinking my MGB doesn’t have it, and it will be fine, since it’s just my “fun car”. I lasted about a month before researching how to add it. It turns out that on the NC, everything is in the car already and it’s as simple as swapping the steering wheel with one that has cruise control buttons. I got wheel mounted radio controls at the same time. Game changer for like $75.
I got a similar upgrade to intermittent wipers. A buddy had a Speed6 that didn’t get its oil plug properly tightened and he didn’t recognize the symptoms fast enough & nuked the engine. I swapped in the stalk from his car (for free) and Bob was my uncle, as they apparently say in Britain.
Yeah, I did that one too. I also added fog lights. The wiring was all there and I swapped the stalk.
And Fanny’s your Aunt, to complete the saying.
Haha, it wasn’t free for your buddy.
True, though he was already on the verge of getting a different vehicle when things went kaboom. He ended up with a blue WRX that he loves.
It’s so weird that the Rostra inline units have so many issues.
I installed one on my ex’s ’07 accent that gave her years of faithful service, but that was a cable throttle with the piggyback servo control for the cable.
For a while, I was driving up to 50k miles/year and I never used CC outside of a couple times to try it out. I get better mileage without it and it’s tough to find a place where I could use it because, even outside the usual traffic, other road users make it very difficult to maintain an exact set speed. My lower trim ’90 Legacy had CC (that I removed to fit an aftermarket wheel), so I’m surprised something so much newer wouldn’t have it. Now that I think of it, my ’70 240Z had an aftermarket one installed. Don’t know if it worked. If I could, I’d send you the one out of my car as I never use it.
Trying to use cruise around here is more frustrating than manually matching the speed of traffic. Everything changed when I got a car with active cruise though. Now I use it all the time.
It’s definitely more frustrating than just using the accelerator myself. I like the idea of ACC, but not all the hardware that comes with it (plus, nothing I’ve bought had it. I think it’s offered on the GR86 manuals now, but it comes with the whole BS Eyesight suite of annoyance that I’d just disable anyway, which would also disable ACC).
I’m reminded now of the old-style aftermarket cruise control setups from the Before Times, which used an either a short extension+pickup on the speedometer cable, or a magnetic pickup at the driveshaft to deliver speed input, and a vacuum actuator attached to the throttle cable. Basically the same as the OEM cruise control, just with the extra set of buttons clipped (or zip-tied) to the turn signal stalk instead of the OEM built-in controls. They generally worked well, and if they failed, they failed “off”. If I recall correctly, there was one of indeterminate age on my ’85 squarebody Chevy pickup that I bought off of Craiglist in 2008… And it still worked, even though the speedometer only worked intermittently.
Sometimes I really miss old tech.
One typical day hanging out in the pick ‘n pull I found what felt like a pot of gold. It was an aftermarket cruise off a geo metro. Never seen anything like it before that day. So simplistic! It had wires that went to a stalk on the steering column, as well as taps into the clutch safety switch, brake light switch, ignition coil, and a cable that was hooked to the throttle with routing secured with zip ties.
I yanked that sucker out and brought it to the counter. Guy asked me what it was and I said: “I don’t know, it looks cool.” Got charged “misc. electrical”, $6 + tax. Hooked it up to my metro and felt like I won something. It worked awesome and it had an added gimmick. Since it operated off engine rpm rather than transmission speed, I could set it in first gear and hit ‘resume’ after every gear change without hitting the accelerator pedal.
I put one of these in my ’88 Sundance. Worked well for a while but was starting to fail when I traded it in.
Yeah. There was a time when these sort of convenience features were regularly left to the dealer as a matter of course.
Ironically, with only a fuse to worry about, true old-tech vehicles seem more resilient to changes like LED lighting, etc.
Hey Mercedes, as a survivor of a rostra cruise controlled first Gen Yaris, I say this with plenty of experience: rostra=fail. We went through 3 (if you count the original dealer installed unit) rostra cc units.
Our issues were random speedometer sweeping while driving, and loss of cc while driving (random shutoff and road surface changes). Never had accelerator issues thankfully, but the issue was never resolved. Dealer kept installing new hardware when we inevitably would show up and explain the issues. We just stopped using it for fear it would get worse. Also, the mounting location is/was an OEM location, but that terribly designed control that offered no intuitive user feedback, just 3 buttons…ugh.
Mercifully, that 2007 Yaris met it’s end in 2012, and the second Gen replacement (Japanese) came with factory cruise.
My mom’s 2005 RAV4 even has the same cruise control lever as this 2012.
Good luck!
Sorry to be a pedantic patty here but I have to point out that the 2007 Yaris is actually the second gen (and its replacement you mention was therefore likely the third gen).
America only got the sedan version of the first gen Yaris which was called the Echo there. I’m sure like the cockroaches they are many of those are still on the road. In the UK where I am Yarises (Yarii?) of newer generations are very common, and first/second gen hatches are still kicking around too.
Regarding the cruise control stalk, Toyota used the exact same part on pretty much all of their vehicles for ages, maybe 20+ years at this point. I don’t think they switched to steering wheel buttons until relatively recently, and there’s probably some current models that still use the old stalk too.
Ok, I’ll take my lumps on the generational misstatement, I should know better being that I was once like you, correcting people about the proper variations (vitz, belta, echo, yaris, etc.).
At any rate, the point I was attempting to make about the stalk, isn’t that there are buttons on the steering wheel, it’s that for whatever reason, Toyota didn’t feel like implementing factory cruise on certain vehicles, even though older models/trim levels had it. The rostra stalk was very counterintuitive if you had driven ANY Toyota with factory cruise. The OEM stalk itself toggles (up-accelerate, down-decelerate, pull towards wheel to cancel) whereas the rostra has 3 small buttons in the same orientation on the same size stalk. I can’t tell you how many times I felt like I was going to break the rostra off the column because I was so used to manipulating the OEM stalk.
The fact that most manufacturers use a common main electrical harness that is junctioned where needed for option add-ons / takeaways now, makes it seem like lazy engineering to omit a factory cruise option. Even on a car as cheap as the US Yaris was.
Apparently the OEM stalk can be installed in one of those Yarii (yes, it’s on my list): https://www.yarisworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33750
(Edit: If the dealer that sold you the car was a Toyota dealer, I don’t understand why the aftermarket cruise came into play at all, and I’m sorry it did. Glad the car kept you safe, whatever happened to it; this comment’s partly musing and partly advice for folks who still have an XP90 Yaris.)
Sounds like junkyard parts from a cleanish Corolla or Rav4 would be more reliable. That was my plan before, and even more so now.
(I can only imagine Toyota was trying to upsell buyers to a Corolla, and I’m surprised my car has power windows and remote locking.)
If you’re car is under cruise control then it’s probably auditioning for the next “Days of Thunder” film.
Surely you Kidman.
Hey, she just wants to go for a Cruise.
Maybe with Tom?
Never been much of a cruise-control user myself. I’ve driven halfway across the country and back without turning it on in our Volt, although I do occasionally use it in my ’94 Fleetwood, mostly because I’m amazed it still works.
Nice job in figuring out the problem! One of the bonuses of having a fleet of odd-ball and not the most reliable cars is getting to experience a small library’s worth of knowledge regarding failure-scenarios and their respective fixes.
I drive using cruise control for every single second I can. I set it at 5 mph above the speed limit and stop worrying about speed and pay more attention towards not hitting someone.
I do similar in our VW, but with the adaptive CC, you find yourself behind a slower car going much slower than your set speed w/o realizing it. Driving the pickup while towing, I use it to stay close to California’s 55mph limit so I don’t wind up speeding.
Oh man, I live on cruise. I used it so much I wore out the steering wheel button on my old genesis coupe. Had to replace the switch to activate it again.
I also live in cruise control. It reduces the driver’s workload. I don’t have to worry about the speed, it adds power going uphill, reduces power going downhill. My speed is always the same, and my brakes will always work so I can slow down if necessary.
My cruise preference may have been affected by an incident one night back in 1999 down in southern Florida somewhere on a four-lane highway that turned into two, and it was the right lane that ran out. I had the cruise on, and my foot resting comfortably under the brake pedal of my ’89 Cadillac Brougham. It got stuck there when I realized I was going to run out of road. There was a car in the left lane blocking any evasive maneuvering and I sailed off into the grass at the end of the lane. Luckily it was just grass, and by that time I had gotten my foot loose, hit the brake, and “merged” back onto the other lane. Thankfully everything was fine, but now even on those rare occasions where I do use the cruise I make sure my foot still has a full range of motion.
Those PEBSAS errors will get ya every time.
Same here, in cars that had it, I never really used it, in cars that didn’t I didn’t miss it. My current car has that fancy adaptive and I just have trouble trusting it. It slows down with traffic but seriously feels like it just “gives up” under 45 MPH, which would be fine if it had the courtesy of saying something. I mean it never stops complaining “you’re too close” this and “stay in your lane” that… Letting me know “hey I’m not driving anymore” would be nice.
Is the iQ still under warranty, or just the module?
Since iQ was discontinued mid 2010s in North America, I would wager only the module is under warranty via the dealer.
Much respect, I would have torn out anything that has to do with cruise control (even though I love it and live it) and let the little IQ ride …
So much easier back in the day, when you went under the hood and connected a servo to the throttle linkage. But, oh, no, gotta have everything “by wire”.
This is why I have zero interest in retrofitting anything not 110% OEM that talks on the canbus in any of my cars.
And 40K in a year in one of those? RESPECT for you wife. Plus she is doing the Lord’s work as an attorney doing what she does. I went to law school in IL, and interned on both sides of criminal law in Chicago – double RESPECT to her.
So, no way to retrofit something OEM from some other Toyota ?
Or anything from a European Aygo ? Those things were made under a gazillion brands, maybe it’s findable and doable ?
Or, errr, from an Aston Martin Cygnet ? Wouldn’t that puppy have cruise control ?
As far as I’m aware, not even the European versions of the iQ had cruise control, including the weirdo Cygnet. I’ve found lots of threads of people trying to get cruise from other Toyota models to work, but they always die off without a resolution or the OPs give up and install an aftermarket unit.
Aren’t the Aygo and the iQ related ?
What about on Daihatsu’s side ?
The Aygo was a joint-venture with PSA/Stellantis, it was related to the Peugeot 107 and the Citroën C1. Not sure that it shared many parts with the iQ, although that’s certainly a possibility, especially regarding electronics.