[T3] Emergency Flasher Wiring

[Sean Bartnik]

Hi all,
To address Jim’s last point first:

Type 3s thru ’69 with the small taillights have 3 separate single-filament bulbs in each rear fixture. Top one is the turn signal, middle is the taillight, and bottom is the brake light. Remember that early Type3s don’t have a reversing light built into the housing. When the big taillights came around in ’70, they combined the taillight and brake light into a single dual-filament bulb, kept the turn signal bulb at the top, and added a reversing light at the bottom.

During the time when Type 3s had 3 separate single-filament bulbs, Beetles and Buses had a single dual-filament bulb at the rear for both taillight and brake light. Hence the 54/54f circuit for the turn signal relay and why it’s not used in the Type 3.

Yes Jim the ’66-’67 9-pin relay does also have the “bulb-out” functionality where it will flash faster if a bulb is burned out or missing.

As far as I am aware there were not 4-pin TS relays in ’66 and ’67. I believe they started in ’68 as that was the changeover from Complex Relay/Simple Switch to Simple Relay/Complex Switch. As far as I'm aware all ’66-’67 (at least for US market cars) had the 9-pin flasher relay.

Here’s a link to a photo of the correct “simple switch” and bracket that gets used with the 9-pin relay:

https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-pfvrft5/0/L8G2LwZ9nzmzFNdFrwjnbVPPPwKnmFdC4dL2vgRft/L/i-pfvrft5-L.jpg

https://jerk.smugmug.com/Cars/Squareback/n-V7SJ2R/i-pfvrft5/A

Here’s another pic of the switch outside of the bracket so you can see the whole thing:

https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-dRtRVWW/0/NBc4x59FXtVgKBnxXLfgBfXjLj6zCMXJwc4CHmrpt/XL/i-dRtRVWW-XL.jpg

And here’s a video of a 9-pin flasher relay test board that I made if anyone wants to send me their questionable flasher relays for testing :-D

https://youtu.be/33K5v4yJqy0
https://youtu.be/33K5v4yJqy0

As I mentioned all the different variants of the 9-pin flasher are functionally the same though they were made by various manufacturers over the years. Some have a silver case, some have a black case, some have a blue case, and they were available in both 6v and 12v versions. I believe the blue case was the final version of the part and all the blue ones I’ve seen were made by Hella. Some of the other variants were made by SWF and SK. 

Sean


> On Mar 5, 2026, at 12:24, Jim Adney <jadney at vwtype3.org> wrote:
> 
> Thanks, Sean, for pointing out the complex relay w/simple switch vs. the 
> simple relay w/complex switch. I never realized that this was what was going 
> on.
> 
> It's worth pointing out that, at some point, and at least by '68, the relays 
> incorporated a feature that caused the relay to flicker quickly if there was a 
> burned out filament. This was enabled by sensing the inrush current that is 
> normal with tungsten filaments. Switching to LEDs, which have no inrush 
> current, disables this feature, but with LEDs that feature is much less useful.
> 
> Did the '66-7 TS relays also get this feature?
> 
> I still don't know what the '66-7 4-terminal TS relays look like. Does anyone 
> have one that they can post a photo of?
> 
> Sean, you wrote about the differences in bulbs between bugs, busses, and 
> Type 3s. Did you mean separate BULBS or separate FILAMENTS? Type 3s 
> have one bulb with dual filaments at each corner, and I have always 
> assumed that bugs and busses were the same. 

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