Mine too was solved.

It seemed that the little white plastic plug fell off the end of the foot
pedal mounted switches. I had found this little white plug on the floor
earlier and thrown it into the bottom of the glove box, wondering what it did.

Then, when I went into examine these switches, on the advice of Joel, I
think, and others, I found that this white thing was missing from one
switch. It is the contact piece that

Anyway, my cruise control is now fixed! Horray!

I'll send this message into the archives for anyone who might be researching
the same problem in the future.

At 10:46 PM 10/22/97 -0400, Jerry Hudgins wrote:
>Folks:
>
>I'd posted some time back that the cruise control in my '91 Carat didn't work,
>and that my local VW dealer couldn't figure out the problem.  Following the
>test procedures in the Bentley manual didn't lead to a resolution.  Even the
>$500 control unit was replaced.
>
>A fine and very persistent independent VW mechanic here in Wilmington NC, Dave
>Metz, finally figured it out.  Late-model Vanagon CC units pick up the current
>speed via an inductive sensor mounted on the back of the speedometer.  (Earlier
>units used a sensor on the axle, sez Dave, but the magnets had a tendency to
>fly off.)  If you put an ohm meter across the two leads on this sensor and spin
>the speedometer shaft, using a drill or other handy rotary device, you should
>see pulsating variations in resistance proportional to the speed.  The sensor
>on mine was dead as a doornail - no continuity at all, regardless of speed.  He
>swapped in an identical sensor from the loose instrument pod of some different
>recent VW (Jetta/Golf/dunno) that was conveniently lying around, and presto,
>I'm cruisin'.
>
>This part is probably cheap even from VW - it's just a little coil with two
>spade lugs - but it can apparently be mined from other, more common VW models.
> Once you get the instrument pod out, the thing comes out with two little
>screws.
>
>Turns out my old control unit worked just fine, so we put it back on.  I guess
>I have a spare now, unless someone out there needs one.
>
>Thanks to those of you that offered suggestions.
>
>-jch
>
>--
>Jerry Hudgins (jerry@e-farm.com)
>
>
___________________________________
Derek Drew                           New York, NY
drew@interport.net