Cruise control

niroshann

Club Member
Anyone here have cruise control bits for an 82/83 280zx? I am about to get some from across the Atlantic but wanted to check if there are bits lurking in the UK. I am after:

1) cruise computer (More than 10 electrical pins on connectors)
2) indicator stalk with cruise buttons
3) harness

I have the other bits and know where to put in the reed switch for speed pickup in cluster.

I’ve previously had cruise on a 1980 car and miss it in my current car - not that I drive it often enough to warrant cruise control!
 

niroshann

Club Member
I didn’t expect anything in the UK.

Managed to source the bits I needed and now begins the mission.

It’s not that I need cruise control in the car. I don’t drive the car often enough and even when I do, I hardly cruise on a motorway where I would need something like cruise control but I have had cruise control in a 280ZX I owned in the past and I really want this gimmick in my current car!

The challenge is that the original 280zx setup used a reed switch in the speedo cluster which relied on a spinning speedo cable with the magnets on it. My car is now running a modern engine from a Nissan skyline and the speed signal is a digital one. Also I seem to recall from my past car that the cruise control doesn’t engage above 110km/hr. In any case I need to figure how to drive the signal into the cruise control computer. For now I am getting the bits integrated into my car and will sort out the signal at the end - I will most likely program up a microcontroller to tap into the skyline’s loom and pickup the speed signal then alter it to suit the original ZX cruise computer.

Pic shows my original indicator switch unit vs the cruise control version. Both are from the later cars (82 onwards I believe). There is an older version for the 79-81 cars which has a different indicator switch setup and also a different computer for cruise.

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5ACD1303-9C37-4C82-843F-03629DA91255.jpeg

There was a bit of fiddling around to get the cruise control one’s switches to move properly.

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Also it is very important to note (not that I expect anyone else to be doing this) that the pins on the units are laid out in mirror opposite format given that the two stalks are swapped over. The loom that goes between the indictor switches and the car’s harness translates these over nicely and so both the LHD and RHD indicator setups still result in the same pin layout at the main plug that connects to the car’s harness. Forgetting this and plugging the wrong ones in will likely blow fuses.

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uk66fastback

Club Member
I love these electrical threads. Can’t say I understand what’s going on from an electrical standpoint but I marvel at people’s ingenuity so hats off! Hope you can get it all in and working with the modern engine ...
 
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