Adventioneering

We’ve had the TJ I don’t know how many miles now. Enough time to drive it across the country from Seattle to Boston and back to Seattle, as well as Nevada and a bunch of other places. During all this time we suffered through the fact the Jeep didn’t have cruise control.

If only I had known then what I know now. It turns out that unlike many vehicles, retrofitting cruise control onto a TJ is very easy. Most TJs (including mine) were pre-wired for cruise control, and the function is handled by the PCM computer, not a separate and costly cruise control computer.

The blank, black colored plastic spacers on the steering wheel are where the cruise control buttons go. There isn’t a stalk or multi-function switch like in many vehicles, at least on this version of the TJ. I don’t know if they changes the cruise control when they redid the dash in the last few years. In addition to the switches, you probably will need a new clock spring that has enough leads for the cruise functions.

The cruise control servo mounts onto the bracket shown above, and plugs into the connector shown above. If you have this plug on your TJ, you are prewired. If not, MOPAR also makes an “overlay” harness that contains just the minimum required to add cruise control without having to replace the existing costly wiring harness. The servo then has a throttle cable that runs out to the spare space on the throttle.

All the PCMs are apparently programmed for cruise control, so nothing more is required, just plug it in and go. The instrument cluster has the cruise light already, because the TJ clusters use LEDs for the instrumentation, and they are all the same unit regardless of the options fitted to the particular vehicle.

Best of all this is a relatively inexpensive job, the list of parts required (if you are prewired) is about $120-$150 from OEM sources.