Nutball

Hello all,

My turn signals were working fine and then just stopped working in the middle of a drive last week.

I have replaced the fuse, flasher, and turn signal switch with no success. I am out of ideas.

Other notes:
- May 64 1/2 mustang convertible with generator
- headlights work fine
- horn works fine
- brake lights work fine
- dash indicator does not light when I attempt to signal a turn
- when I press the brakes and attempt to signal for a left turn, the left brake light goes out like it should (right side works as well)

What am I missing?

Thanks,
Nut

jp1967stang

http://averagejoerestoration.com/res...rams/1964i.jpg

I would make sure you have the right connectors after the plug at the column but before the firewall plug. Looks like their are bullet connectors 38A, 38B 38C, 38D, 38E, 38F. If any of these came unpluged or if you mixed up 38B and C I would assume the light can not make ground to flash as they ground through the tail light housing.

jp1967stang

Looking at it is probably not 38B as your brake lights work as normal. I would check 38B as its comming from you turn signal flasher and if that didnt work none of your turn signals would work is labled as a blue wire. I would check the one side of the flasher orange yellow wire for power. If not looks like i would most likey be broken wire.

Nutball

So I measured the voltage at the orange wire to the flasher with the engine running and got 24 volts when the turn signal is not engaged. The voltage drops to ~0 when I engage the turn signal.


Why is the voltage so high? I shut the engine down and measured the battery: ~16 Volts. I then measured across the battery terminals with the engine running and got 27 V!!

jp1967stang

Im unsure of why the high voltage. But if you have voltage coming out of the flasher i would move on to the next item and test that. Then just keep moving on to the next one aslong as you have above 12 v. If you dont find a bad wire then i would look into the voltage it might be normal but ive never messed with 64.5 mustangs just 65 and their are many diffrences in the wiring.

fastbackford351

I'd double check those readings.

If you're measuring those kind of voltages you need to be feeling the harnesses for excessive heat because something is grounding out and probably melting.

Nutball

So I did what you should never do and changed several things all at once:
- I checked all the wiring to the regulator and cleaned up the contacts
- I replaced the regulator
- I replaced the batteries in my multimeter
- While my turn signal bulbs seemed OK I changed them anyway.
Now the voltages seem to be OK (12-15 V)


So my voltages seem good now but I still have no turn signals. Time to start tracing wires I guess.

Thanks again for all the help,
Nut

fastbackford351

I suspect your voltages were good all along and your multimeter batteries were weak and giving you flaky readings.


A test light is handy for this kind of work.

Since neither side is working then I'd bet that there is something common between them that is kaput. Things in common between them are power, the flasher, the turn signal switch and ground.

If they come on but do not flash then I'd bet money on the flasher being bad. If they don't then I'd look at your turn signal switch.

Turn on the key, hit the blinker crawl under the dash and see if you have any signs of life out of the column to verify your turn signal switch is working.

Here is a pretty cool video I found on Youtube with some Ford turn signal troubleshooting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz5uJ-ibVZI

jlg2002

This is fairly stright forward. Fromt the flasher there is a Blue wire that goes to the turn signal switch and it should have battery voltage on it all the time with the flasher off. It should pulse battery voltage with the turn signal switch turned to left or right.
Unplug the connector on the steering column that goes to the TS switch and with a ohmeter check the car side plug for shorts in the green orange, green white, green, white blue, and orange blue locations to ground you should see similar resistance on all wires. if there is a short (close to 0 ohms) you need to trace that down. if the resistance is ok your TS switch is bad and needs to be replaced.

Nutball

Sorry for the slow reply, I was travelling on business.

So I disconnected the turn signal switch (note: mine has individual bullet connectors - not one large connector) and rang out the car-side wires. I am showing four wires connected to ground:
green-orange, green-white, white-blue, and orange-blue. Each of these wires measured < 10 ohms to ground. All other wires measured no connects.

I am not sure how I could go from a working turn signal to four shorted wires in the middle of a drive.