I know I am not imagining this, but, I was Extremely Surprised and Impressed..

My daily drive is down a 6 lane highway at "Top Of Taps" on Main South Road in Adelaide.

This road into the city is a fairly steep down hill run with many twists and turns, a bit like an over-sized slalom.

From the top I was cruising at 84 KMH (80 Zone) , in 5th gear (Manual Gearbox) with cruise control on and set to 84 KMH.

While descending with feet off ALL pedals I noticed that the car was not picking up ANY speed, holding at 84-85 KMH ALL the way, every now and then I swear I could feel the car gently braking to maintain the CC Set Speed of 84 KMH.

This road decent would be a good 800 metres to a kilometre.

I tried this same road a day before without Cruise Control Set or ON and the car would pick up speed forcing me to manually brake!..

SO obviously the cars PCM in conjunction with the ABS system is controlling the cars braking speed.

Are any of you guys aware of this feature?

I was not before, as ALL the other Cruise Control System I have Set On would over-run down a hill and the driver would have to manually brake which then canceled the CC.

I would be interested to hear of any other owners who have experienced the same occurrence.

Ash

 

Could be a safty feature. If your set at cruise control and going down hill at 80+ kmh I would say the pcm/ecu was like I dont want to die! and was engine braking the car?
I dont know. I have never used my cruise control. On top of that going down hill at over 80 kmh. So I could not tell ya.

 

There is No change in my engines RPMs though.

As we know Rotaries are not that good for actual engine braking/compression braking anyway.

80 KMH is only 48 MPH!

I am convinced my car is braking itself to maintain the CC set speed!!

 

South Australia has different drug laws to the other states right?

Amazing if it is true...

 

HA HA, the grass capital of the southern hemisphere...I never touch the stuff!

 

I know its only 46 mph I was jking mang.
http://www.eforecourt.com/mph_kph_speed_convert.htm

 

On the SI 80 in 5th is a good gear to hold speed. Sits right on 3-3500rpm and takes a fair decent to get it to pick up speed. with the lower diff gearing on the SII I would say this is doubly so.

Try it in 6th.

 

Doing downhill from Eagle on the Hill is a good test and even in 4th gear it will increase in speed because it is just so steep!

 

I'm surprised they don't have fixed speed cameras around there yet.

 

My 8 does it to. It's cruise control.. so it slows you down to keep it at the speed you set the cruise too. It doesn't break, it engine breaks because it delivers less power.... This seems to obvious so maybe you're talking about something else?

 

MMMm, Yes I know it is cruise control.... maybe it is new in the Series II,?, they do have a revised/new PCM.

If the engine is braking it is not registering on the Tacho as RPM's don't change at all, I swear I can feel the rear brakes slightly pulsing on and off.

 

if the tach is not moving AT ALL then you're correct, it probably is braking...

but even the slightest fall in rpms causes noticeable braking