Cruise Controlectomy

When driving home one day the accelerator suddenly crept away from my foot and the car accelerated - Unintended Acceleration! Tapping the brakes brought the accelerator back up. I ignored this incident at first but then it happened again and I knew I had to sort it out.

There are only two things attached to the throttle linkage, the accelerator and the cruise control actuator. Because the cruise control stork was broken and easily jiggled into random modes I knew this had to be the culprit. There is a plug somewhere under the driver's side kick panel that connects the cruise control stork to the cruise computer. I was feeling lazy to take apart the interior to get to the plug so I decided to go the easiest and safest route - remove the cruise control actuator.

Fairly simple procedure. Unplug the actuator, pry off the throttle linkage with a screw driver, and then unbolt the actuator. I also removed the holding bracket as well.



















I was worried that I might get a warning light or something telling me the cruise control actuator had been removed but nope, no warning lights. Alls good now. No more unintended acceleration.