Defender Cruise Control? YES PLEASE!!

Sometimes when on long journeys in your Defender don’t you wish you could just press a button and the car will control the speed? Unfortunately none of the classic defenders actually came with cruise control and it’s only the very latest model (2020) that you can have it installed from the factory.

The Discovery 2 had cruise control as an option way back in 2001, this was a build option as well as a retro fit option (fitted after delivery by the dealer). It consisted of adding two buttons one on the binnacle (clocks) on/off and one on the right hand side of the steering wheel used for activation/cancel etc. But unfortunately it was never an option on the same year of defenders. UNTIL NOW!

We’ve developed a PLUG and PLAY kit where you simply install our custom built harness in to your Defender by following our simple but straight forward instructions/guide and you could be cruising on the motorway/highway in less than an hour.

Our Kit requires NO soldering or cutting of any wires, you cannot go wrong simple as plug and play

Defender TD5 Cruise Kit

There are some restrictions when the ECU’s were manufactured the cruise strategy was present in both 10p (1999 – 2001) and 15p (2001 – 2005) ECU’s however the earlier 10p versions require some hardware modification within the ECU to get them working reliable and at the point of writing this document still a work in progress. However ALL 15p versions of the NNN ECU have this strategy in place and will work out the box with our harness and switch with no issues on the standard drive train.

Installation Video on Youtube

We mention standard drive train because this is important, if you have fitted a 1.2, 1.3, 1.6 ratio transfer box then cruise will not work straight away. This is because the ECU calculates which gear it’s in by doing some math namely engine speed against road speed and providing the output is within a predetermined value it will allow the cruise to operate as normal. Obviously changing the transfer ratio from defender 1.4 to discovery 1.2 would throw this way off and will not work. This isn’t a problem as we can edit this data to bring it back inline so everything just works as it should the same can be said regarding diff values and tyre sizes.

We opted for the Discovery 2 Cruise switch as its a great switch and feels fantastic even though these are around 20 years old there still going strong! Sometimes simple design is the way forward!

We are at present looking at some alternative offerings for switch’s so keep an eye on our page and hopefully will have some more options available very soon