Radar Cruise Control Problem

[ivyleaf]

My LS430 2004 has radar cruise control. Wonderful when it works. But it will spontaneously beep and disengage reported various errors randomly,

"PCS Not Available"

"Cruise Not Available"

"Clean Sensor"

Dealer inspects the system and cannot reproduce the problem (it won't misbehave on a short test drive) and reports it is behaving as designed. I cannot believe this behavior is as designed, I also can find no other complaints like this on Google or this forum. That leads me to believe I've got a unique problem.

Cruise is unusable in the rain, will not stay engaged more than a few seconds. Will stay engaged for up to an hour on a clear day.

Has anyone else seen this. Or have any ideas? at 32K miles I'm under warranty and have the Lexus extended warranty.

Thanks!!!

[scottmcc]

By design, it will not engage in rain or snow.. (when it detects inclement weather).

Mine did the same thing and I found a small amount of some snow that had accumulated around the edges of the sensor. (was not snowing or raining at the time of disengagement). Once I cleaned it, all was well..

Make sure that your sensors on your front bumper are clean and free of debris..

[01 Ultra]

It will also disengage if there is too much glare from the sun - expecially at sunset & the sun is low enough in the sky to directly affect the sensor.

If you feel you must have your cruise control on during certain times that the radar cruise will not work, you can alway change it over to standard (non-radar controlled) cruise. In my 01, you do that by pulling back on the control lever for a couple of seconds & that will turn off the radar control feature - just be carefull to remember that you will NOT maintain a set distance behind the vehicles in front of you with the standard cruise!