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Pedal Pull Cruise Controls:
Most people are not aware that there are no formal
qualifications required for people to call themselves a Cruise
Control Installer. In Australia today, you require training and a
licence to do electrical work on your home and a licence to install
car alarms in NSW, but there are no restrictions on who can fit
accessories to your vehicle. Anybody can buy Cruise control systems
and call themselves installers, so without up to date training
there is the potential for an incorrectly installed cruise control
to jam the vehicle throttle and cause an accident.
With the new generation of Drive by Wire vehicles being released
onto the market, this lack of training on the installer’s part will
mean that most installers will use a standard cruise control.
However, as the vehicle does not have a throttle cable from the
accelerator pedal to the engine, the only installation method is to
make some sort of connection to the vehicles accelerator pedal with
the cruise control actuator. This will usually involve mounting the
actuator close to the firewall in the engine bay and routing the
cable from this actuator into the passenger compartment. The cable
then needs to be supported with brackets mounted to the dash, and
the vehicle accelerator pedal has to be modified to attach the
cable to it.
As you can imagine modifications of this kind can be very
difficult within the confines of the under dash area of today’s
modern vehicles. With this type of installation it is impossible to
give any guarantee to the safety and reliability of the cruise
controls operation and furthermore your Insurance Company may void
your policy if your vehicle has a pedal pull cruise control
installation and is involved in an accident. To guarantee the safe,
reliable use of this kind of cruise control and it’s acceptance by
insurance companies it would need to be properly engineered and
thoroughly tested in what original equipment manufacturers call
Rough Track conditions.
Rough Track is where the car manufacturers drive a vehicle over
extremely rough roads under test conditions for a period of time to
simulate the use of the vehicle for its normal life. This is done
so they know that during the normal life of a vehicle, a component
that is critical to the operation of the vehicle is not going to
fail - no matter where the vehicle is driven. Installers who use
pedal pull cruise controls cannot guarantee that their installation
will last under these kinds of conditions, the failure of the
cruise control while driving the vehicle may cause the vehicle
throttle to jam open which could have catastrophic results
You only have to ask any of the Vehicle Manufacturers or
Importers in Australia their opinion on after market Pedal Pull
cruise controls and you will not find any engineers who endorse
this practice - most are horrified by the danger aftermarket
installers are putting their customers and the other drivers on the
roads at risk of, by doing this type of installation.
Vehicle Designers and Manufacturers spend hundreds of thousands
of hours and millions of dollars developing the vehicles that we
drive to be extremely safe, and they are concerned that the
addition of any non-approved accessories may compromise the safety
that has been built into their vehicles, let alone when people
install products in such a way that it is such an obvious safety
hazard.
The Drive by Wire Throttle systems on these modern vehicles have
been designed to be safe, so the last thing you as the consumer
would want is to compromise your safety by having a Cruise Control
System fitted which mechanically connects to your accelerator
pedal. We at COBRA are proud to supply and install a range of
unique Drive by Wire Cruise Controls that have been designed
and manufactured in Australia, to not only provide you with an
accurate, reliable and easy to use product but also to maintain the
vehicle manufacturers’ safety standards when installed.
Yes you may say this is our opinion and why should you buy our
Unique Drive by Wire Cruise Control when my local installer tells
me “A special cruise control is not needed – I have done hundreds
of your vehicle type with Pedal Pull and have not had a problem”,
well that may be so, but as someone once said “if you play with
fire, you will eventually get burnt”.
At COBRA, we have safety in mind at all times - this is why we
install the right cruise control for the vehicle you drive. The
Drive by Wire Cruise Control our company supplies and installs are
manufactured by the same Company that supplies the major vehicle
manufacturers.
In closing we pose the following question: If pedal pull
installations were safe - wouldn’t the vehicle manufacturers be
using it?
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