Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2017 18:56:09 +0000
Reply-To: Stephen Grisanti <bike2vcu@YAHOO.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Stephen Grisanti <bike2vcu@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Re: Rapid left blinker after fix
In-Reply-To: <6f8ff2ba-f9d7-eec5-4ab5-6e0c69ccaf17@cox.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Well, I swapped the two striped wires on that socket and it made no difference. Swapped them on the other socket and that also made no difference, so moved them all back. What did make a difference was swapping the bulbs side-for-side; fast blink moved to the other side. Aha! Found a spare bulb in the glove box, old enough to have the PO's handwriting on the package after I've owned the van for over ten years, and tried that in the left (original) side. Fast blink. I wound up with two bulbs that blink fast and one that blinks slowly, so I left the two fast ones in place, put the other in the glovebox as a spare and will pick up the correct bulbs, whatever the manual recommends, next visit to the FLAPS. Thanks for the help. Incidentally, the fast blink was occurring on the shorter of the two filaments in a given bulb, and the slow blink was occurring on the longer of the two. Swapping wires on a socket seemed to make no difference in this, for whatever reason. As long as it passes inspection I'm happy and I hope nothing else shows up 'cause I'm making the appointment tomorrow.
Stephen
On Saturday, February 18, 2017 8:17 PM, vw_van_fan_Mark <madvws@COX.NET> wrote:
You should pull the left front light out again. Look at the 3 wires and
make sure the brown is plugged into the middle spot. If it already is in
the middle just swap the other 2 wires with each other. That should fix
it, hopefully.
If that fixes it the reason is that the front bulb has 2 filaments, a
low wattage and a high wattage. The low wattage is for running light and
high wattage is for blinker. If the wires are switched the low wattage
filament becomes the blinker and the lower amps makes the blinker relay
think there is a bad bulb so it flashes fast.
The 2 filament bulbs come in 2 versions, with the filaments reversed. So
just replacing the bulb can cause this problem if the replacement has
the filaments switched. The 2 versions have different numbers but either
version works fine if the wires are plugged in to match.
Mark
Stephen Grisanti wrote:
> This is usually the sign of a burned out bulb, but everything is fine and it all works. I set out to prepare the Westy for its annual inspection and, as usual at this juncture, the left front blinker was out. It was not filled with water because I had previously drilled holes in the bottom of the lamp housing but the bulb socket was corroded and one of the three wire connectors had rusted away. I had a spare socket from a junkyard turn signal and was able to clean that one up, replaced all three female spade connectors on the wires to that corner and coated all connections in dilectric grease. All bulbs flash when the emergency flashers work, and all turn signals work but the left turn signals flash rapidly while the right perform at the normal pace....
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