Our minivan is almost 20 years old. We really like it a lot. In order to keep it in working condition you have to do maintenance on it. We have done a lot of that. On our road trip over Thanksgiving we had to replace a fuel pump. I figured the money was worth it otherwise the car would not go. Philosophically, I was happy to get 19 1/2 years of service out of the old one. Today I went out to the airport to replace the sway bar bushings. I figured that I earned myself about $75 an hour doing it myself. As you can see from the photo the old ones were pretty well shot to hell. It was fun to do. I could have never replaced the fuel pump myself, but I like to do what I can as far as maintenance is concerned. Anybody know how a cruise control works?
Cruise control uses a gyroscopic accelerometer connected to a fratostatic pitot tube to determine the car's velocity in relation to the ground (physical ground, not electrical ground) and sends messages (via e-mail? Instant Messaging? smoke signals?) to the engine, telling it to slow down, speed up, or konk out, depending on the observed velocity. But how it does all that is a mystery to me. Good luck fixing yours. Older cruise controls like yours lacked an important capability---to compensate for earthquake-caused ground movements. :-)
