Need electrical help with blinkers, Where r u Coolerman? (1 Viewer)

[Adog]

hazards works fine. Left blinkers worked fine. Right blinkers inoperable. Checked grounds. Seemed all good. Ordered and installed new turn signal switch assy. Now turn blinkers on left and right work one time and quit. The only thing I have done is remove both tail lights to install new oem lights but have not done that because the connects will not fit. Bummer as that is the main reason I bought oem. Will the missing tail light fixtures cause the above. Also, there is a green/white wire coming from the turn switch assy that was not hooked to anything when I replaced the switch and I see no other wire under the dash to plug it into. Any help appreciated. Is it the flasher needs replacing, seems to work well with hazards. Any help appreciated. Thanks

 

[Adog]

76 f40 build 9/75

 

[Tin basher]

Yes not having lights hooked up could cause signals to only flash once

 

[Adog]

Yes not having lights hooked up could cause signals to only flash once

Thanks so much. I don't want to cut the plugs off to rewire the rear lights unless I have to. Will make some calls this am to see if I can get the right ones that will plug in. The old lights are trashed. Guess I will work on a door today. Thanks again.

 

[corleykj]

I have been there the last few weeks on my 78. Try charging your battery. I have been dealing with blinkers that weren't working well. Anytime my blinkers weren't working well it was the battery not having enough volts.

 

[74HogGuy]

You can get the proper male/female connectors from @Coolerman so that you don't hack up the new lights. Like everyone else said you can't check lights until the back lights are wired and grounded.

 

[Tin basher]

You could hook the rear lights up with some spade conectors without cutting the plugs off
Until you get the plugs

 

[Spike Strip]

The mechanical Flasher relay does not work well with low battery or wonky lights. The electronic replacement from Toyota works much better.

Also, Coolerman sells an adapter on his website for a generic (cheaper) modern flasher to plug into your harness.

 

[airon23]

View attachment 1404443 View attachment 1404442 hazards works fine. Left blinkers worked fine. Right blinkers inoperable. Checked grounds. Seemed all good. Ordered and installed new turn signal switch assy. Now turn blinkers on left and right work one time and quit. The only thing I have done is remove both tail lights to install new oem lights but have not done that because the connects will not fit. Bummer as that is the main reason I bought oem. Will the missing tail light fixtures cause the above. Also, there is a green/white wire coming from the turn switch assy that was not hooked to anything when I replaced the switch and I see no other wire under the dash to plug it into. Any help appreciated. Is it the flasher needs replacing, seems to work well with hazards. Any help appreciated. Thanks

Did you ever get this figured out? Was it the battery? I have the same issue where blinks once then stays on. Every once in a while it will blink like I'll be turning the steering wheel and it blinks then eventually stops. I'm stumped if it's a relay issue, battery, etc. I'm interested.
Also I have that same Green/White wire sticking down and don't know what it's for, did you figure that out?

 

[Coolerman]

Here are the things that MUST be in place for the OEM flasher to work:
You MUST have BOTH 1157 bulbs on BOTH sides working and rated at 27 watts. Corroded bulb sockets need to be cleaned.
You MUST have a fully charged battery (or have the truck running ) while testing. Low voltage will not allow the capacitor in the flasher to charge all the way up resulting in a no flash condition.
You MUST have good grounds at all four lights. This is the one that everyone screws up on stating, "Well... they look good" The can look good all day long, and still not be. Clean them up even if they look good. Don't be fooled by the fact that a lot of the time the Hazards will work fine but the turns signals won't! The OEM flasher has to have a certain amount of current flowing in order to work. When you activate the Hazard lights, you have 4 bulbs pulling 2 amps EACH. Even with sketchy grounds this will be enough to flash. However the turn signals only light TWO bulbs and the sketchy grounds will not allow enough current to flow.

Now you could have a bad OEM flasher. The capacitor could be dried out, the relays could have dirty or out of adjustment points, or the plug terminals could be corroded. The replacement Toyota makes is a good deal, and works very well.

I have NEVER seen a turn switch on the later 1972 and up trucks be bad. Earlier truck turn signals do get out of adjustment due to the way it is activated, but the switch itself never fails.

FYI that Green/White wire you have sticking out does not connect to anything, and is not needed. It is a left over wire that originally went to the brake switch to feed the brake signal through the turn signal switch for the turn signals that combine brake/turn in one bulb. Later trucks have separate bulbs for the turn signals.
If you really want to know how the OEM flasher works here is a page I did a few years ago detailing its function: Hazard/TurnSignal Operation

 

[airon23]

Here are the things that MUST be in place for the OEM flasher to work:
You MUST have BOTH 1157 bulbs on BOTH sides working and rated at 27 watts. Corroded bulb sockets need to be cleaned.
You MUST have a fully charged battery (or have the truck running ) while testing. Low voltage will not allow the capacitor in the flasher to charge all the way up resulting in a no flash condition.
You MUST have good grounds at all four lights. This is the one that everyone screws up on stating, "Well... they look good" The can look good all day long, and still not be. Clean them up even if they look good. Don't be fooled by the fact that a lot of the time the Hazards will work fine but the turns signals won't! The OEM flasher has to have a certain amount of current flowing in order to work. When you activate the Hazard lights, you have 4 bulbs pulling 2 amps EACH. Even with sketchy grounds this will be enough to flash. However the turn signals only light TWO bulbs and the sketchy grounds will not allow enough current to flow.

Now you could have a bad OEM flasher. The capacitor could be dried out, the relays could have dirty or out of adjustment points, or the plug terminals could be corroded. The replacement Toyota makes is a good deal, and works very well.

I have NEVER seen a turn switch on the later 1972 and up trucks be bad. Earlier truck turn signals do get out of adjustment due to the way it is activated, but the switch itself never fails.

FYI that Green/White wire you have sticking out does not connect to anything, and is not needed. It is a left over wire that originally went to the brake switch to feed the brake signal through the turn signal switch for the turn signals that combine brake/turn in one bulb. Later trucks have separate bulbs for the turn signals.
If you really want to know how the OEM flasher works here is a page I did a few years ago detailing its function: Hazard/TurnSignal Operation

Awesome response and thank you for all that concise pertinent information. I will make sure all grounds are good. I know there is some rust on one or both the front fenders where the blinkers mount. That mount would be the ground correct? If so then the corroded rusty spots might be causing this issue of bad grounds.
Thanks so much

 

[airon23]

Also excellent write up from that link you posted.

 

[Coolerman]

Thanks, I went through this mess myself and wanted to know the real reason they acted up all the time.

If you are going to the trouble of removing the lights to clean the mounting posts to bare metal, I would just go ahead and run separate ground wires from the light reflectors to a bolt on the inner fender. That will solve the grounding problem problem once and for all. There are a couple of threads that show how to do it.

 

[airon23]

yeah that sounds like a better long term solution. any idea what to search for those threads?

 

[73FJ40]

@airon23

I know there is some rust on one or both the front fenders where the blinkers mount. That mount would be the ground correct?
Thanks so much

The blinker mount is only one ground that needs to be cleaned. You need a solid ground path all the way back to the negative terminal on the battery.