I am experiencing problems with cruise control on 2004 f150. It works once and stays in speed, then drops out for no reason as if the brake were applied, and then the cruise switches do not allow anything to turn back on or reset the speed. Its like it just shuts off, but then it will not turn on. Any suggestions. I am not sure if it is the switches on the steering column, or if there is a deactivation switch somewhere, or what.

 

I had a problem like this the first time I towed our trailer on a long trip with my old Nissan Frontier (don't throw rocks - I sold it and bought my Ford). What happend was, I hit a pretty big dip on the interstate and the combination of that and the trailer caused a big enough jolt that the brake circuit sensed that I was applying brakes. The problem did not go away until I stopped the truck, turned the ignition off and then back on again.

I'd check the brake light actuating switch. My feeble guess is, it is set too "high" so that it senses you are stepping on the brake when you are not. It should be somewhere around the brake pedal and I'm sure there's a way to move it slightly or set it so that it doesn't register braking quite as quickly.

- Jack

 

my 04 does the same thing, it is worse in the summer. In colder weather 40 or less it seems to work fine. In the summer when the cruise is set it will shut off for no reason, sometimes you can hit resume and it will reset and then drop out again,

 

Yes,
Changes in lighting, like rear brake-light bulb outages, or changing rear brake-light bulbs from incandescents to LED's, can cause the cruise control issues. Make sure you are using the correct type bulbs in the rear tail-lamps.

I replaced my tail-lamps with the Hella F-150 LED tail-lamp lighting upgrade kit, and have no problems whatsoever. They made that kit work correctly with all built-in necessary resistive loads so that the low-power LED's don't mess with the Cruise Control system. And they are the best looking LED tail-lamps on the market.

Searching on this site for Cruise Control problems will bring you up lots of info on the subject.

JSB