We have a new 2010 Journey with about 1200 miles on it. Sometimes the cruise control acts strange on little hills. When it is engaged, and we go down a small hill (seriously, maybe a 10' total drop, this IS Florida!), the car wants to brake, and the engine revs up to like 3500 - 4000 RPM. It almost sounds like the car shifts into neutral. Apparently I'm not the only one to have this same problem.

http://www.aboutautomobile.com/Compl...Cruise+Control

I'm going to schedule a dealer visit this week, but my truck is down right now for brakes, so we need 1 car available! Maybe next week. Anyone else experience something like this?

 

it's not a problem , it's designed to work like that. If you set your speed at 70 km/h the engine will do whatever he can to maintain that speed. So , it mean that if you go downhill and your car start to go faster than 70 km/h , the car will downshift between gears to slow the car. In certain situation it can go extreme and the engine can go to up 5000 rpm because the car CAN'T use the brakes for you to slow down.

Now guess what , this is the where YOU do your part : Use the brakes to slow down the car ( it automatically cancel the cruise control ) or if you don't want to slow down just quickly tap the brakes to cancel it or manually cancel the cruise control to let it go and gain speed.... and then use the resume function when you are below your speed set point on a flat road.

When you have a manual transmission this behavior does not occur because the engine does not have control of the gears. So , if you are going downhill with the cruise control engaged in a car equipped with a manual transmission it will not downshift and you will gain speed as you go downhill .. but wait , if you are going too fast you will use the brakes if you do not want to get an accident downhill right ?


So this is not a problem , just learn how it works. The moron who posted his complaint in the link you posted just don't have a freaking clue on how a cruise CONTROL work.( in a Journey at least)

Burn

 

It's just weird because I have driven that road many times with several different cars on curise control, and I have never experienced this behavior before with the cruise control engaged. And the cruise as mostly set at 45 mph on a little back road. Very goofy. I'm pretty sure how cruise control works, seeing that I have been driving with it for 19 years now, all over the world, with many different car companies on many different roads, and this is the first time something like this has been happening. It seems mostly to be happening after the car has already gone down the little hill, and it brakes fine, but when it levels out, it's like the car tries to speed up, but it doesn't shift back up into gear. I'll see if I can be more descriptive after driving it later.

 

ah , it won't shift back .. well this is something else. Perhaps when it go too low in the gears it can't shift back up. I never saw to date my journey below gears #4 while on cruise.....

i didn't tried this yet but next time you go downhill and you know the engine will downshift put the stick on the auto stick mode and leave it on gear #6 and see what happen. i guess the engine will not downshift because you force it to keep it on #6

 

i tested my method today and it works.

While on the cruise control put the shifter in the autostick mode this will force the engine to keep the gear #6. This will get rid of the no so wanted downshift when going downhill , it will stay in #6 . Now use the autostick as needed to downshift in #5 / 4 if you are going uphill and need a bit more power.

not perfect but it works if you don't want always cancel and resume the cruise control.

 

Just to put in my two cents worth..... This transaxle is actually a Mercedes product, and a very good one at that. It has a program called adaptive shifting where it will learn your driving patterns and shifting habits if you use the AutoStick feature. This can cause shifting to be different from one vehicle to the next. The program can be reset, although I don't remember how to do it. Some will tell you that simply unplugging the battery will reset it although I'm not sure about this method.

 

as quoted on allpar.com :

http://www.allpar.com/mopar/transmissions/62TE.html


so it's says adaptive electronic control or AutoStick as a standard feature

the way i understand it Chrysler/Dodge choose Autostick and not the adaptive feature , it seems that you can't have both...what do you think ?

 

I think you're reading too much into it. Whe you are using the AutoStick feature; YOU are in charge of the shifing (to a point) it's kinda like driving a manual tranny without the clutch. I think the Adaptive program learns from your shifting pattern, otherwise what is there to learn if you left it in drive all the time (how hard you accelerate)?

Just my two cents worth......

 

Well, I use the autostick feature during my brief interludes of driving the car, but my wife never does. She could care less. I'll have to play with it and see what it does.