Retrofit cruise control. Brake issues.

[BuxtonZ3Guy]

Hello Chaps,

I had a bit of a funny turn in the Z3 on Tuesday.

I retrofitted cruise control to my 2001, 3 litre. Easy job and it worked first time. However, I had a nasty surprise when I did a high speed test.

The cruise was working fine between 50 and 60mph. However, when I disengaged the cruise I lost servo power to the brakes. It was like I had no brakes! Even after disengaging the cruise by knocking the car out of gear the brake issue continued. I had to use engine breaking and the handbrake to stop. A bit scary.

I found a piece of very quiet road and tried the cruise again. I got the same breaking issue on 2 further occasions. However, at lower speeds, up to 40mph the cruise does seem to behave itself.

The car has worked (and braked) perfectly up to the point the cruise was installed. The brakes have also worked fine since this incident. Cruise has not been used since. Needless to say I won't be using cruise again until this is rectified.

I do have a dash cam and a Road Angel speed camera detector fitted to the car. The cables for these are routed close to the cruise control unit that connects to the wiring loom. Could something from this cabling be interfering with the servo assistance to the brakes?

Any help you guys could give would be greatly appreciated. I was quite shaken up by what happened.

Cheers.

Andy.

 

[motco]

Is it fly-by-wire? Following on from your other post about the fugitive connector, I assume so.

Actually I have no idea at all why what you describe happened and whether the two things are connected by anything more than coincidence.

 

[BuxtonZ3Guy]

Yes. It's fly-by-wire. I dont think this is a coincidence. It drove perfectly this morning without the use of cruise.

 

[bertiejaffa]

Maybe a dodgy module - I fitted it to my post face lift and had no issues at any speed

 

[BuxtonZ3Guy]

Hello again chaps.

Think I've been a bit of a dick. When I engaged the cruise I parked my right leg near the seat. I think I caught the clutch when I went for the break.



Problem sorted I think.

Andy.

 

[PhilH67]

sounds like an issue with the interface between the seat and the brake pedal

 

[motco]

A wetware failure!

 

[motco]

Hello again chaps.

Think I've been a bit of a dick. When I engaged the cruise I parked my right leg near the seat. I think I caught the clutch when I went for the break.



Problem sorted I think.

Andy.

I drove my bosses Austin Maxi down the M1 for a couple of hours. The Maxi had very offset pedals and when it came time to leave the motorway I went to change out of fifth gear and my foot hit where the clutch should normally be and due to the offset I shoved the brake to the floor. My snoozing boss in the passenger seat slithered out of the seatbelt and ended up in a crumpled heap in the footwell. Did my career no end of good...

 

[the Nefyn cat]

I drove my bosses Austin Maxi down the M1 for a couple of hours. The Maxi had very offset pedals and when it came time to leave the motorway I went to change out of fifth gear and my foot hit where the clutch should normally be and due to the offset I shoved the brake to the floor. My snoozing boss in the passenger seat slithered out of the seatbelt and ended up in a crumpled heap in the footwell. Did my career no end of good...

Is that a way to treat a Maxi?

 

[motco]

No! Drive direct to the breakers but do not collect £200 - it's not worth it! They were a good, well considered design badly executed. I was party to using three or four of these in the 1970s as company cars. At the time I opted out of a car in lieu of salary, but had a Leyland Princess 2200 Auto HL in 1976. I soon found that Maxis weren't the only heap of ordure from BL.

 

[PhilH67]

The only good car to come out of BL was… well nothing really, they were all crap

 

[motco]

The only good car to come out of BL was… well nothing really, they were all crap

I had a 1970 MG Midget and I loved that - in fact it still exists. Bits fell off of course, but in the sixties and seventies they all did that. Two Princesses - both company cars - and the second one never saw a day with out fault and some were serious such as torque convertors breaking off and dropping into the bell housing - twice.

 

[t-tony]

If they had made the Ambassador first and not the Princess the hatchback might have brought more sales. BL cars were not really any worse.than any other makes of the time. Mechanically Italian cars were OK if you weren't bothered about being able to stop, but they just dissolved even quicker than English steel. Ford experimented with recycled steel on the Mk.5 Cortina and they caught up and out paced the Mk.4 in the corrosion stakes.

Tony.

 

[motco]

Just before one company car change I looked at the Lancia Beta. Before even my first Princess (1976) was swapped for the second one (1980) many Beta engines had dropped out through corrosion of the engine mounts. That was a near miss! I had two Capri 2.8 Injection company cars between 1983 and 1987. The children had started to complain about leg room in the rear so the final company car was a 2.0 Auto Ford Granada. That was a nice car and I bought it off the firm and ran it to 170,000 miles before selling it on.