QuestionQUESTION: This happened for the first time tonight. I got into my car, started it and the cruise control light on the dash was blinking. Had never done it before. When I got on the road and pressed the Set button, nothing happened. It just kept blinking.
Halfway home, it stopped blinking. I pressed Set and it worked fine. The next time I stepped on the brake, it started blinking again and wouldn't work.
Then I noticed it would stop blinking momentarily if I accelerated hard, but would come back again a few seconds later.
ANSWER: Hi, William. As far as I can tell from the information in the owner's manual, neither the "cruise" lamp in the cluster nor the indicator on the cruise button are intended to blink. So I'm thinking there's some sort of electrical problem causing this to occur.
Do you know whether your brake lights are functioning normally when this occurs?
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QUESTION: All I can offer is that I have not been pulled over or rear-ended.
AnswerMy suspicion is that your brake switch intermittently shorts the "cruise on" circuit to ground or that one of the wires in this circuit is intermittently shorted to ground.
Curiously, there's a technical service bulletin for the 2001 and 2002 XG for much the same issue. I doubt its applicability here, however, because the cruise systems are completely different between the two vehicles.
Check your brake lamps to be sure they work properly, both with your exterior lamps on and with your exterior lamps off. If they do, I'd say to take a guess and just put the brake lamp switch it as it's inexpensive. Then, if you still haven't resolved the issue, it's time to get into more involved diagnostics or turn it over to a shop.
