The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay turn signal prolem

Hello everyone. I have a 1955 1st series 3100 with dealer installed turn signals. When I bought the truck all I had was the switch and housing (with lever)and wires going down the steering column.I purchased a dealer installed accessories manual and completed the wiring,changed the front single filament bulb sockets to doubles and installed a Bussman #535 6 volt flasher and pigtail.Wired 'X'to power,'L'to switch 'P'to indicator light on speedo and grounded flasher per manual instructions.Got all done and when lever is operated all the proper lights light up but don't flash and indicator light doesn't light up. What's up? I tried changing the flasher wires around but nothing.Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.....Bob

Double check your grounds, bad or no grounds make funny things happen. I've never heard of a flasher being grounded unless it's an LED flasher. Maybe try just grounding through the lights and see if that changes anything.

When I installed the new front bulb sockets I soldered a ground to them attahed to mounting screws into body. I only grouned the flasher body in an attempt to solve the problem. But thanks; I will check the grounds (again).....Bob

When I was wiring my truck I had everything wired and working great, then the headlights and turn signals started acting funny or not working. My inner fender that my headlight relays are grounded to wasn't getting a good ground connection to the rest of the body. Also, I had a bad connection to one of my turn signal indicators on the dash, messing up my signals. Issues like that can take a lot of diagnosis to figure out the issue.

After that I learnt not to assume that grounding to a fender would mean the item was properly grounded. I'm not saying a ground is your issue, I'm just sharing my experience.

What bulbs are you using now? I'm wondering if you have enough load for the flasher to work.

I'am using wagner 1154's in both front and rear.

Here's an added twist. I held the flasher in my hand,ran a short hot jumper wire from my battery terminal to 'X' on the flasher; ran a wire to the hot wire on a new socket and bulb to the 'L' terminal and then touched the socket to the ground terminal on the battery.The light lights up but doesn't blink. I even ran a ground wire to the 'P' terminal in another attempt to get something to happen but still nothing. I thought that maybe it was a bad flasher but when I had my friend at the parts store order the flasher he received two and complained that it would sit on the shelf forever, so I bought both. I switched the flasher and....NOTHING!

The bat voltage might be low with all this testing. Try charging the bat. or run the engine at a fast idle for a few minutes.

Yeah, I checked that too during all of this; I got 6.33 volts. Thanks.....Bob