U0405: Invalid Data Received From Cruise Control Module
What to do
The car drives normally; cruise control will not engage.
One reassurance worth having: this cannot make the car accelerate on its own. The system is built so that a cruise request the engine cannot verify is simply refused — you lose the feature rather than gaining an unwanted one.
Two cheap things to check first.
Do your brake lights work? Cruise control cancels when you brake, and it reads that from a switch on the brake pedal. A faulty or misadjusted switch makes the car think the brakes are always on, so cruise never engages — and the same switch usually operates the brake lights, so somebody standing behind the car while you press the pedal tests it for nothing.
Do the horn and the steering wheel buttons still work? Everything on the steering wheel runs through a coiled cable behind it that is a known wear item. If the horn or the wheel controls are also playing up, that is one part causing both, and it is a much more useful thing to report than a cruise fault alone.
What this code means
The cruise control module is broadcasting data that cannot be accepted as true. See U0400 for the family's framing.
Cruise control is a system that asks the engine for torque without the driver's foot on the pedal, and everything about how it is supervised follows from that. A request that cannot be verified is not one the engine module will act on — so an implausible cruise request is refused, and the feature simply becomes unavailable.
That refusal is the correct and important behaviour, and it is worth stating plainly because the alternative is what people fear about the system: a car that accelerates on its own. The architecture is deliberately arranged so an untrustworthy cruise input results in no cruise at all rather than in unintended acceleration.
The values in question are the set speed, the engage and cancel requests, and the switch states. The last of those is the commonest source of trouble and the cheapest.
Cruise switches live on the steering wheel or the column stalks — which puts them behind the clockspring, and the corpus already identifies that as a wear item at U0212. A cracked clockspring gives intermittent, contradictory switch readings, and the classic accompanying evidence is a horn or wheel controls misbehaving at the same time. A cruise fault alongside a dead horn is one part, not two problems.
And a brake switch worth checking, because it is trivial and common. Cruise control cancels on brake application, and it reads that from a switch on the pedal. A misadjusted or failing brake switch tells the system the brakes are permanently applied — so cruise will not engage at all — and the same switch usually operates the brake lights, so a check of those is a free test.
Likely causes
Start here
- Faulty steering column clockspring · moderate
- Faulty cruise control switch · easy
- Corroded or loose connector · easy
Less common
- Faulty cruise control module · specialist
- Damaged data bus wiring · moderate
- Faulty receiving module input · specialist
Symptoms
Components involved
Information, not instruction
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Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
Community experience
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