[T3] Turn Signal Trials & Tribulations

[Dennis Stiefel]

My '73 square developed a problem with the right turn signals starting a few
months ago. The lefts workd fine, but the rights flashed at doubletime.
While this usually indicates that a lamp is burned out, both of my right TS
lamps were fine and were flashing, as well as both indicator lamps in the
dash.

Today I decided to try to figure out what was going on.

Since headlight grounds came up here a few weeks ago, I thought I'd make
sure the ground screw in RF corner of the trunk was okay, but when I looked
at it, I realized it had only one wire in that lug and that wire was for the
headlight, not the TS or running lights. 
Anyway, I loosened and greased that screw and then noticed that the front TS
lamp was no longer flashing, while the rear one was. I fiddled with the
screw for awhile but finally gave that up and decided that my TS lamp had
chosen that moment to burn out. Really odd.

Went to remove it and discovered that it was rusted into place, so I had to
destroy it to get it out, but managed to do that without damaging the
socket. Then I had to scrape off the rust in order to get a good used bulb
to go back in. Then I had to scrape the socket contacts to get them to make
contact. I probably wasted a good hour on the whole job....

Finally got everything back together and working again, this time with the
correct flash rate.

I'd never seen the flash rate go wrong while the bulb was still "good," but
either the old bulb had a slightly higher resistance or there was resistance
in the bulb contacts. Something reduced the bulb current below the point
where it triggered the TS relay into the fast flash mode.

I would have thought this drop in current would have made that bulb
noticably dimmer, but it didn't seem to be any dimmer than the left side.

--
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Jim Adney, jadney at vwtype3.org
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
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Had a similar thing happen with my Golf. It was some dirty contacts on the
rear bulb but it was still working just fast like a bulb wasn't working.

Dennis