Because the poorly printed directions have such miserable pictures, it took me way longer than necessary. The photos are a bit like impressionistic paintings where you have to interpret what they mean. The troubleshooting section of the guide is worthless. Nonetheless, with several hours of work and some trial and error as well as some hacking, I got it done and, so far, it works great. It will be much easier the second time around if my dad wants it on his xB.

So you know...

As others have said, don't pull out the gasket for the wires between the engine bay and the passenger compartment. Just cut holes on the inside and outside.

Getting a fuse connector and wiring the power through an empty fuse socket is way easier than the contortion involved in hooking up to the recommended wire in the back of the fuse block. It's not elegant, but it's 1000000000 times easier.

Be very careful with the ECU connections as the pictures there are particularly impressionistic. The pictures are of the reverse of the connectors, which isn't the side you tap into, so you have to use some spatial sense. At the same time, the pictures in the manual have the connector on the left being the actual one of the left, and the connector on the right, is the actual connector on the right, so while each individual socket is reversed, the order of them isn't. A quicker way to think of this, on the 04 model, is that you want to use the sockets in the center of the ECU, not on the far left and right. Getting this mixed up left me cruiseless for a week.

If you're in Fremont, CA and want help, lemme know.

-werd

 

The cruise control works pretty darn well. I just made the trip down the 5 last night.

It accelerates rather slowly which is probably good for fuel economy.

It does push the throttle enough to kick down a gear on the uphills. If you set it on a flat area, the speed drops about 2mph on an average uphill and raises about the same on your average downhill. I'm taking lightly graded freeway hills of course, not steep residential hills.

The accelerate and decelerate controls are cheap, and the accelerate button did get stuck once. I just turned it off and it reset and worked fine from then on.

It made the 8 hour (including stops) trip A LOT easier.

I wish I installed the control stalk differently. I'll probably reangle it forward to make it easier to reach. I also have grabbed it instead of the turn signal stalk a few times.

 

Rotating the stalk forward does make it easier to reach. If I installed it all over again, I'd move the hole I drilled a 1/4 inch or so forward. I have big palms but short fingers (read into that whatever you will ;).

I'd like to be able to use the cc below 33mph, or whatever the cutoff is. The measured acceleration would help with city fuel economy and keep me from burying my foot. Any ideas how to do it?

Next, bigger tires!