Hey kocolu,
even i was using 1.1.6 till last month and what i noticed is that if you are using mongrel to start your web-server, i never saw it's reloading for any changes, either in controller, model or view or any thing for that matters., when i send a SIGHUP signal it use to reload(I mean mongrel). But this problem was not there when you use, script/server (in development mode)which is there in your application.