hi all

been at it again

got a crusie control system off a ford falcon (NZ car) got the brake switch, control module, and cable and plug.
managed to get hold of a diagram the wiring, and using a honeywell hall switch for a pulse signal off the drive shaft. made up a small control box which sits on the dash, i also have a falcon on which i could prove the system i got worked, and also have a scope could see the required signal that the cruse was looking for from the sensor, which is square wave. i made a small lug to fit to the throttle body for the cable to latch onto, welded that into place and also made mount plate to hold the cable in position, i fired the entire unit up in the garage, jacked the vehicle up and put on axle stands, so i could drive it with out gonig anywhere, a bit safer than trying to read a scope at 50 mph!!!, anyway got it installed and went for test drive, got up to about 80ks before it would engage, once it engaged it accelerated up hill and decelarated as required, the + and _ gives about a 8k difference in speed which is to high, i am going to add another trigger plate to the drive shaft to give a higher frequency for the speed control of cruise control. will get some pics tomorrow and post.

but ford cruise control can drive a rover

pedronz

 

You never cease to amaze us. Kudos again.

Would think you would want the trigger plates "balanced" on the shaft, (180 degrees apart) so the shaft won't wobble under load - one indicator of gross shaft wobble is lights from cars behind you appearing as "ovals" in the rearview mirror, plus vibration.

 

Also - some notes -

Many Fords use a reluctor sensor for the vehicle speed sensor (VSS). This produces a sqaure wave of "X" pulses per mile, but is impacted by rear end gear ratio. I swapped an axle in a van, and the speedo was reading 20 mph low (going 80 on GPS, and 60 on speedo). In the Ford ECU there was a program change for the rear end ratio.

Among other things at the office, I build vans to survey pavement with computer imaging. We started off using this same VSS signal, and found that to move gear from one type of vehicle to another the taxi cab companies had already solved that. They have a little electronic box that can be set to divide the pulses as needed to drive the taxi cab meter, and the meter is swapped to new cabs as old ones wreck, etc. Seems like it was about $50. Hopefully you won't need to go to that solution. link to one source http://matsoncabsupply.com/products/...l-divider.aspx

Our current truck has a shaft encoder mounted to the rear hub, generates 15,000 square wave pulses per revolution of tire, we trigger the scanning lasers every 4mm of horizontal travel and capture the data of pavement texture and gps location at 60 mph. Helps to have a 250 amp alternator for all the widgets.

 

interesting work you do there.

As for the sensing blocks i got 2 at present 180 deg apart, am going to 4 blocks, I think, currently it engages at 80 ks, so if i were to put 2 more on it should halve the engagement speed, on fords, the cruise is used from 40ks and up, and by doubling the blocks it should also halve the + - button increments.
I am using a hall switch form honeywell which gives a nice square wave output, pulled high by a resistor.

luckily i bought two a while back, one was a spare for the the other i was goingto use as the megasquirt crank sensor, which if the bloody ECU keeps giving grief will be fitted tomorrow!!!!!

Cheers

Pedro

 

Yep, always go up by a factor of two. BTW, where is this 1500 mile trip you mentioned taking you - circle back from Dunedin?

 

leaving from wellington (NI) down thru rainbow to christchurch, look at earthquake damage then thru to dunedin, then over to cromwell stayingin a place called Tarris, there for about 6 days then head north back to wellington, we are going to be doing alot of the gold trails and tracks around the place, before the greenies get in and lock it all off to vehicles etc,
and before the kids tell me to get lost!!!

Cheers

Pedronz

 

Now that's a trip that will require a handful of memory cards for the camera!

One of my other jobs is supporting teams of reaserchers that are sent out to survey tsunami and earthquake damage. My boss, a geotech (sub-specialty in Civil Engineering), goes all over the world looking at earth quakes just after they happen.

If you have a truck full of people and electronics, an inverter and a plug strip helps keep the peace.

 

got the new blocks on the drive shaft today, hooked up the brake pressure switch as well, well put it in line anyway, went for test drive and could not get the cruise to engage, after about a hr of going around in circles i checked the switch adn it was open circuit, turns out the plug was dirty contacts, cleaned that up and tried again, all good, engages at 40ks and increases by about 3-4 ks per push, went for a decent drive and test, all good now

lots more relaxing to drive on cruise , be ideal down south.

cheers

Pedronz

 

[QUOTE=pedronz;288715]got the new blocks on the drive shaft today, hooked up the brake pressure switch as well, well put it in line anyway, went for test drive and could not get the cruise to engage, after about a hr of going around in circles i checked the switch adn it was open circuit, turns out the plug was dirty contacts, cleaned that up and tried again, all good, engages at 40ks and increases by about 3-4 ks per push, went for a decent drive and test, all good now

lots more relaxing to drive on cruise , be ideal down south.

cheers

Pedronz[/QUOTe/]

Cruise control worked faultlessly there some long roads in the south island.
magic scenery. Brilliant views. Good weather used about 750 litres fuel, still making it I hope

Will post pics when I get to a Pc. Tablet good for surfing web but tricky to post links.


Seriously considering a supercharger on top of the v8 can't use that much more fuel! !!

Cheers
Pedronz