Turn signal switch; Rants and Raves

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like_A_pike

that's not factory
Joined
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Western WA
I've been fighting with one for awhile. My 3 year old broke the original playing with it. Although the horn never really worked very well and it needed replacing anyway. So I buy the highest recommended unit and tossed it in. Well I didn't get the housing bolted in correctly and I smashed the new switch against the bolt that didn't catch. I attempted to fix it since it looked like you could solder the wires back on but destroyed the unit trying to get it apart.
Second unit, different brand, (a little less $$), I get it in there and voila! horn works and blinkers are doing their thing. Or so I thought.... a couple months later, I pull in for a car inspection and the lady says "no rear turn signals (or brake lights) FAIL!!"
What the heck so I'm following the manual, and chasing down charge. Turns out the right bulb is blown and the ground is no good. The left side has no charge at all no matter what I do. try the bulkhead connector in the kicker panel, brown is hot the dark green is not. Went to the connector at the column, light green, tan, brown, all have juice still nothing on dark green. WTF thats my second new switch. Open it all up and find no pinched wires until I get to the new switch. The dark green one seems backward and it's pinched in two spots.
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So I cut it out and solder it back. still no charge. I peak inside the switch and I can see that the little rod isn't making contact in there. This time I smoothed the burrs off of the metal pin that the turn signal lever bolts to. Opened it up and scraped this little bugger of plastic off of the contacts and everything works now!!

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first my rant; why do they put the burrs on this thing! That's the little piece of plastic I scraped off of the contact next to it. If I had destroyed another switch to get to that I'd had been steamed for sure

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and the rave; Shout outs to 67Dart273 and Mattax fer sure. Thanks for all the threads and posts that have been invaluable in tracking this crap down.
 
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Glad ya got it! Perseverance pays off!
The electrical gurus on here cant be thanked enough for their constant advice and input!
 
They are for sure a cheap POS. In the 70's then a poor sailer, I did a "fix" on my RR TS as well as two other sailors cars. The brake likes had quit and it turned out to be in the hazard section. I was able to move or jumper a couple of those, and restore brake lights but disabled the hazard function. I have no idea, anymore, How I did that. I've ALWAYS had a service manual. When I bought my first Mopar, a 69 383RR 4 speed used, in San Diego, one of the first things I did was run to the dealer and bought one. When I bought 70 V code from a friend (he's still with us, and we still talk) he already HAD one for the car.
 
I hate doing anything inside the steering column of these cars. Stupid design for sure. I feel for you!
 
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That switch had two more fights left in it before we got to this point but we are working and stable.....
 
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