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I own a 2001 Buick Park Avenue with roughly 133k miles on the engine and about 150k on the transmission (which was replaced last summer with a used transmission). Over the past week, the cruise control has been failing. It used to come on reliably, but it started to not come on when I activated it. I now turn the cruise control switch on and off, and about 1 out 20 times the cruise control actually works when I press it in (in Park Avenues, the entire cruise control assembly is on the blinker / windshield wiper paddle), and about half of the time it "works", it accelerates uncontrollably! As I have a poor muffler and the car is now very loud when accelerating and hence uncomfortable to throttle, cruise control is even more important to me than it was before. Interestingly, the same thing (with the cruise control) happened on a Park Avenue from '96 I owned once it reached about 160k miles.
I have an OBD-II scanner for my Android smartphone, and the program (Torque) only indicates the same code that it always has since I purchased the car, which is totally unrelated to the problem.
The factory specified diagnostic tree for cruise control on this vehicle has almost 40 specific checks to be done with a test light and VOM.
The problem could be as simple as a single poor connection in the wiring harness, or a bad sensor, switch, cruise amp or servo unit ... or could be a number of aging/failing items and a binding cruise control cable, for example.
Absent using the diagnostic tree to go through the system functions & controls, your approach would be to be sure that all of the connections are sound, the fuse for the system is clean/tight and intact, and that the brake light switch is properly adjusted and that the third brake light is functioning properly.
Today was a bit warmer (about 38F rather than 25F), and cruise control seemed to activate more reliably, like 50% of the time. Pressing the switch into the RESUME setting caused it to accelerate uncontrollably, which was stopped with the tap of the breaks. Once it started accelerating when the cruise control was off. That was again quickly resolved with the tap of the breaks, but it could be dangerous in certain situations, although there is enough lag between the motor revving up and the vehicle actually accelerating to give me time under most circumstances to hit the breaks.
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