Rear turn signals- left turn no blink, right turn both blink

splitty · Post by **splitty** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 2:16 pm

Some kind of voodoo glitch has gotten hold of the rear turn signals on my '57 bus. Move the lever for a right turn and neither rear light blinks, move it for a left turn and both of them blink. The turn signal unit was not holding the lever position, so I thought it might have gone south, being almost 50 years old. I replaced it with a generic aftermarket unit and same problem.

The front turn signals work fine. I'm really scratching my head on this one. I'm having trouble coming up with a logic that could point to the cause. Some kind of chassis short seems to be the only thing that might make sense. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks,
Splitty

Post by **david58** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:05 pm

Check your grounds, sounds like a defective ground.

57typeII · Post by **57typeII** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 5:12 pm

David58bug wrote:Check your grounds, sounds like a defective ground.

I checked all the tail light connections, cleaned and greased them and I still have the problem. I don't think it's a ground problem cuz the lights work only they work all wonky as described above. If it is a short, what could make it do what it is doing?

Splitty

(I had to get a new forum account, some sort of glitch when I went to update my profile.

Post by **david58** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 7:23 am

Sounds more like a bad ground connection somewhere. When those electrons have to find their own ground, anything can happen...
If you take a jumper wire and connect it to battery negative and use it to ground the bulbs socket to see if the problem goes away. The ground could be at any bulb try them all.

The ground connection is so important that I'll have to repeat myself here - make sure your ground connection is sound before proceeding with your trouble shooting - the ground probably accounts for 50 per cent of wiring failures!

Don't assume that because some lights are working, that the main ground is okay - some circuits will feed back through other circuits in an attempt to find a ground. If some strange things are happening, lights that aren't supposed to flash are flashing etc., it is most likely a bad ground problem.