V10 Shudder/vibration Climbing on Cruise Control

[Skipper]

Recently experienced a mild engine shudder/vibration on cruise control while climbing an overpass. Turned off cruise and it stopped. No shudder/vibration making climb without cruise. Runs normal on level road using cruise. Internet search suggest several things could be the cause. Anyone had/fixed this type occurrence?

 

[DonTom]

Recently experienced a mild engine shudder/vibration on cruise control while climbing an overpass. Turned off cruise and it stopped. No shudder/vibration making climb without cruise. Runs normal on level road using cruise. Internet search suggest several things could be the cause. Anyone had/fixed this type occurrence?

You shouldn't use cruise control on hills unless you're in an EV. You can ruin your tranny on hills when on cruise, by the very tough fast shifting back and forth. Your vehicle is trying to tell you something and that is to not use the cruise control!

One of the many advantages of an EV is no tranny so then you can use the cruise control on the steepest hills you can find with no issues at all. But with a gas or diesel, just turn off the cruise control in hills!

-Don- Crescent City, CA

 

[Skipper]

You shouldn't use cruise control on hills unless you're in an EV. You can ruin your tranny on hills when on cruise, by the very tough fast shifting back and forth. Your vehicle is trying to tell you something and that is to not use the cruise control!

One of the many advantages of an EV is no tranny so then you can use the cruise control on the steepest hills you can find with no issues at all. But with a gas or diesel, just turn off the cruise control in hills!

-Don- Crescent City, CA

I don't use it on a climb but I was driving freeway and talking to wife not thinking about turning it off as we approached overpass. It caught me off guard as the shake never occurred before. Totally agree with you.

 

[Boat Bum]

I learned that in short order.

 

[A Traveler]

You shouldn't use cruise control on hills unless you're in an EV. You can ruin your tranny on hills when on cruise, by the very tough fast shifting back and forth. Your vehicle is trying to tell you something and that is to not use the cruise control!…

What it’s trying to tell you is that you actually have to DRIVE these vehicles by being a DRIVER, not a steering wheel holder. You cannot just put a motor home in “D” and cruise down the highway like it was a car.

I use cruise control about 90% of the time on the road, up hill and down. There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing that, IF you actually drive your motor home and are not just along for the ride. When getting into the bottom of a grade, I manually shift down to a lower gear at the bottom of the grade. I don’t wait for the transmission to do it because it’s always too late. It cannot anticipate anything, it can only react to something that has already happened. The engine and transmission are both very happy when handled like that.

 

[Skipper]

Thanks for advice and yes I DRIVE my motorhome, Traveler. Using cruise on grades is not something I would not normally do!! Been driving a motor home about 5 years; RVing off and on for better than 50. Just tying to determine if a mechanic might be in order as it caught me off guard. Sounds like I'm OK. Overall the Engine runs good and coach drives very well.

 

[DonTom]

You cannot just put a motor home in “D” and cruise down the highway like it was a car.

Shouldn't do hills with cruise control in any vehicle with an auto- tranny van, car or anything (except EV's are okay with it, no tranny). Cruise controls are for long level drives with only the very slightest hills that require no auto-downshifting. And with a stick shift with cruise, you have other issues on the hills. Best to turn off the cruise before shifting with any type of tranny.

-Don- Crescent City, CA

 

[SpyderRv]

"Recently experienced a mild engine shudder/vibration on cruise control while climbing an overpass. Turned off cruise and it stopped. No shudder/vibration making climb without cruise. Runs normal on level road using cruise. Internet search suggest several things could be the cause. Anyone had/fixed this type occurrence?"

I experienced a similar incident while driving through the gentle hills in Austin with my "New to me" RV. Slight shudder felt wrong, plus my gas mileage was poor. It had a dead ignition coil which in my opinion was masked by the fact that only 10% of the engine was not working. Idle was smooth. Posted on various RV sites and the general reply was check coils. A known failure point on the Ford engines. No engine codes so I started pulling coil connectors until I found the one which made no impact on the idle. Pulled that coil and it tested bad.

 

[DonTom]

No engine codes so I started pulling coil connectors until I found the one which made no impact on the idle.

No engine codes . . . yet.

It often takes a while for the codes to set. Usually has to happen more than a couple of times to set a misfire code. They do a lot to prevent false codes on OBD2 which means it may have to see the problem for a while before you get the check-engine light.

-Don- Crescent City, CA

 

[Skipper]

"Recently experienced a mild engine shudder/vibration on cruise control while climbing an overpass. Turned off cruise and it stopped. No shudder/vibration making climb without cruise. Runs normal on level road using cruise. Internet search suggest several things could be the cause. Anyone had/fixed this type occurrence?"

I experienced a similar incident while driving through the gentle hills in Austin with my "New to me" RV. Slight shudder felt wrong, plus my gas mileage was poor. It had a dead ignition coil which in my opinion was masked by the fact that only 10% of the engine was not working. Idle was smooth. Posted on various RV sites and the general reply was check coils. A known failure point on the Ford engines. No engine codes so I started pulling coil connectors until I found the one which made no impact on the idle. Pulled that coil and it tested bad.

Will check. Thanks

 

[John Canfield]

For the 118,000 miles on our former Horizon (ISL 400HP.)
On mild grades we left the coach in cruise control, on steeper grades when climbing we would manually control the transmission. Descending a steep grade with the Jake brake was simple - when we needed to reduce speed - foot off the throttle. Never ever needed to use the service brake.

All other vehicles - cruise = on. The transmission knows when it's time to change gears regardless.

Moved to Motorhomes from Winnebago.

 

[Babe2201]

You shouldn't use cruise control on hills unless you're in an EV. You can ruin your tranny on hills when on cruise, by the very tough fast shifting back and forth. Your vehicle is trying to tell you something and that is to not use the cruise control!

One of the many advantages of an EV is no tranny so then you can use the cruise control on the steepest hills you can find with no issues at all. But with a gas or diesel, just turn off the cruise control in hills!

-Don- Crescent City, CA

Is this just with motorhomes or any vehicle?

 

[Old_Crow]

Recently experienced a mild engine shudder/vibration on cruise control while climbing an overpass. Turned off cruise and it stopped. No shudder/vibration making climb without cruise. Runs normal on level road using cruise. Internet search suggest several things could be the cause. Anyone had/fixed this type occurrence?

On my '00 Bounder that shudder was cured by changing the spark plug boots between the coils and the plugs. The coils and boots are easy to change. Don't mess with the plugs unless the motor has near 100k miles on it.

 

[Babe2201]

Shouldn't do hills with cruise control in any vehicle with an auto- tranny van, car or anything (except EV's are okay with it, no tranny). Cruise controls are for long level drives with only the very slightest hills that require no auto-downshifting. And with a stick shift with cruise, you have other issues on the hills. Best to turn off the cruise before shifting with any type of tranny.

-Don- Crescent City, CA

I am sorry but I have to say this is wrong. I can see a heavy motorhome or if towing a heavy trailer but I have used cruise on hills with a lot of different vehicles over the years and not one bit of tranny trouble with any of them. For that matter a lot of Nissan have CVT transmissions that also would not cause any issues.

 

[LarsMac]

If you're running BIG hills, such as running across Colorado on I-70, Cruise control is all but useless.
Now, if you're running some state like Missouri or Kansas, or I-75 between Atlanta and the Florida Line, OR, for that matter, just about anywhere on I-40, the hills you will be running are going to keep you CC busy, but I really doubt that they will have an adverse effect on your tranny.

On our Sundancer, I almost never use CC. But, it is almost always being used when we are traveling with the Lincoln. The Lincoln now has almost 400K miles running between Colorado and Maine, or Florida, with CC used constantly, and the tranny is showing no signs of quitting, yet.

 

[Larry N.]

All this "no cruise control on hills" is garbage, at least for some rigs. On my current Newmar Ventana and on my previous Beaver, I use(d) cruise control quite a bit, including through the Rockies. However it DOES need to be shut off on certain occasions, less so on my Ventana than on the Beaver on the uphill, and less on the Beaver than on the Ventana for downhill. And there are times going uphill where I'll manually shift gears earlier than automatic would do it.

The differences are due to the way the cruise control behaves on the uphill and the differences in engine brake for the downhill. On the Beaver, once the speed (with CC on) had dropped some large amount below what was set, the CC would disengage automatically, whereas I have yet to see that on the Ventana, thus can just mash the pedal down (something that was discouraged on the CAT-driven Beaver) to keep speed up a little.

On the downhill, the Beaver had a two stage engine compression brake, and even down from the Eisenhower tunnel to Silverthorne (6% plus) the 2nd stage didn't let the speed get much above 60 mph, while the Ventana has a VGT, Variable Geometry Turbo, in the exhaust, which is much less effective and needs careful attention to not get too fast on all but the shallowest of hills.

One other big difference in the two rigs was that on the Beaver you could not use the compression brake with the cruise control on- engaging it shut the CC off. On the Ventana I can leave the VGT on all the time, even with the CC engaged.

SO a lot of the discussion above seems to be either based on how someone's specific rig behaves or some preconceived notion of what a "driver" is.

So as with so very many other things, it all depends...

 

[Mark_K5LXP]

Separate from the usefulness of cruise control in an RV I would want to know what's "shuddering". Is it the engine lugging cause the tranny isn't shifting, is it "hunting" between gears, a driveline vibration or what? None of what a cruise control does should cause abnormal operation so maybe that's the thing to explore, not whether it's practical to operate it over a given terrain.

Mark B.
Albuquerque, NM

 

[DonTom]

Is this just with motorhomes or any vehicle?

I would say any vehicle that causes rough shifting in the hills. If there is no constant rough shifting, I don't see much of an issue. But depends on many things such as the size of the hills and the type of vehicle and tranny.

If not sure if it's okay, don't use the cruise control. Better to be safe than sorry. You're better off to let the vehicle slow down a bit when going uphill anyway.

-Don- Crescent City, CA

 

[Babe2201]

I would say any vehicle that causes rough shifting in the hills. If there is no constant rough shifting, I don't see much of an issue. But depends on many things such as the size of the hills and the type of vehicle and tranny.

If not sure if it's okay, don't use the cruise control. Better to be safe than sorry. You're better off to let the vehicle slow down a bit when going uphill anyway.

-Don- Crescent City, CA

I disagree. I think a constant pressure or lack of pressure on the pedal would be better for the transmission. I have never even heard of using cruise control on hills being bad for an auto tranny so I have to question when I hear it stated that it is.

 

[Kirk]

You shouldn't use cruise control on hills unless you're in an EV.

Shouldn't do hills with cruise control in any vehicle with an auto- tranny van, car or anything

On long, steep grades I would agree but no hills at all??? I owned a class A with the Ford V10 for 14 years, 12 of them fulltime and drove it in cruise probably 90% of the time, other than in mountains. I drove a company van between 25k & 40k miles per year in WY for 18 years and probalby had them in cruise at least 90% of the time. I now tow a travel trailer with a Dodge/Cummins that tows in cruise pretty much all of the time except on very long steep grades. I have never experienced a transmission problem in any of those vehicles. I would agree that you should never allow a transmission hunt back and forth but that can happen in or out of cruise.