About a year ago my beloved Ford Explorer gave up on me and after much searching I found a replacement that I absolutely love – a Honda Pilot. The size is comparable to the Explorer and its a dream to drive. Nothing else was even close in size to the Explorer that didn’t’ look like and over-sized car. I am still trying to understand why the SUVs are all looking like over sized cars and worse, they all look the same. I want an SUV darn it, a nice rugged vehicle that looks like an SUV, not a big car!
Alas, there was one problem with my vehicle – the cruise control. It would not work. The cruise main light would come on, but the cruise control would not activate at speed over 30 Mph no matter what I did.
I tried getting help from my trusty Facebook Honda Pilot group and a pilot owners website forum as well as many google searches and no luck in finding a fix that worked. Then, I saw comments about replacing the controls so I bought the replacement controls on eBay and swapped them out and still no go. Twice!
There were also some mentions about a brake switch, but no details on how that was involved or even how to get it to work. Really, I didn’t even know where the brake switch was. I finally came upon a YouTube video that was exceptionally helpful in showing exactly what needed to be adjusted on the brake switch (involving a penny) and that worked. Yay!!! The real issue was that by design, when you step on the brakes while the cruise control is activated, the cruise control will deactivate. Since the switch was not in the correct position the signal being sent was that the brakes were being stepped on, even though they weren’t. So, no activation.
I was not satisfied with a penny as the fix – since at any time the penny could drop out or who knows what would happen. So, me being me, I went about trying to really figure out the real fix and WOOHOOOOO I fixed it. Less than an hour after the penny trick. I did all kinds of happy dances. The fix was to remove the switch assembly, adjust the brake pedal and replace the assemble ensuring that the button was being pressed in the correct position. Since this is something better shown than told, I made a video. Hope this helps someone else.
