Is my 1993 Miata Too old school for LED's?

Asked by majorrich (14741

) September 29th, 2012

This weekend I took a shakedown road trip in the Miata I have been working on. I had a tail light out so I replaced it with an LED replacement bulb. As it turned out, bad contact in the tail light socket, so I didn’t really need to upgrade, but I digress. After I got on the freeway, the cruise control wouldn’t work. It would hold speed, then cut out randomly. Very annoying. After a few hours of that nonsense, I put the regular bulbs back in, they worked fine and the cruise control worked flawlessly for the rest of the trip. Maybe I was holding my mouth wrong?

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3 Answers

It maybe the bad contact in the socket is is causing it. check your grounds. The circuit for the brake/running lights maybe causing the cruise control to malfunction. I had a Mitsubishi that COULD NOT have the 4 way flashers on and have the cruise control work !
Think flashing lights equal to malfunction socket.

Tropical_Willie (31487

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Does the car’s computer notice that there is a light flashing and disable cruise control??
I never heard of that before but there is some rationale to that… it could assume any change of direction, or braking, or emergency flashers is a state that cruise should be off.
Too smart for its own good maybe.

dabbler (18896

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I’m going to take the sockets apart and ‘give em the business’ tomorrow and see if it still does it. This is too strange not to try and figure out.

PS. 300 miles is about the limit for a Miata. Handling is too responsive, so the slightest movement (say to scratch your nose or get a drink of water) sends the car weaving all over the place.

majorrich (14741

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