The last few days I have been getting the following message upon starting the car "Cruise Control Not Available". Car seems to be running just fine. Anyone have a similar issue? 2007 XJ8L....96,000 miles.

 

Mine did that. Ended up being a sign that my battery was on its way out. I never thought the car hard started either, but it cranked so much faster with a new battery.

 

I got that message and ignored it thinking that i'd get it looked at one day. Then one day I also got "Transmission fault", my CD player spit out a CD, my windows let down by themselves and a few other issues. Turns out that my alternator was bad. Had to have the car towed to the dealership.

 

Independent Jaguar repair shop mechanic and owner here.

cruise not available is caused by a fault in the throttle system or brake system or a failing battery/voltage issue. 3 most common causes of this is throttle body or brake switch or bad battery. Look for either a tps code or brake switch code. If no fault codes are present i would suspect bad battery.

Edmund Jr
Edmunds Jaguar & Rolls Royce service
Palm Desert, CA

 

Thanks all, guess it is time for a new battery.....

 

Check the battery and alternator first. Batteries aren't cheap to replace on a suspicion. If the car has adaptive cruise, the radar unit could be blocked or need realignment to the vertical. If it also says DSC not available, it is probably a wheel speed sensor. It could also be the other things mentioned above.

 

Just a heads up though, but if you have a bad wheel speed sensor (I had one class come loose) you'll likely see all three messages of "cruise not available", "DSC fault", "ABS fault" along with the ABS light illuminated. With a bad battery, I'd regularly get cruise not available and randomly ABS fault.

 

Thought I would update. It was the battery. Problem solved. Thanks again for the comments.

 

cold weather seems to trigger the message since the first time I start my car it takes a bit longer than normal. Once the engine warms up a bit the message goes away so I'm attributing it to a a voltage issue.