My '70 Estate was fitted with caravan turning lights (massive yellow disgusting things) to comply with Aust. regulations. Under grandfather legislation, cars of 25 yrs or more can be original, so I'd like to go back to the blinking brake light system. How do i wire it up so that the light flashes with the brakes applied? there must be some way of cutting power to the brake light when the turn signal is on. I'm assuming the original wiring is still in-tact, just bypassed, but i've no idea what i'm looking for. Any advice would be appreciated, but keep explanations simple as i'm no auto elec!
do you have any friends that could help you through this project? if not, if you know someone who is a competent car alarm installer, they might be of service. are you any good at understanding an automotive wiring schematic? there are a couple of ways this addition of lights could have been accomplished. you need to investigate wires in three different areas of the car. 1st..wires that are inside the rear of the car. 2nd..wires behind the dash on the steering column (the big flat plug). 3rd...wires at the brakelight switch. somewhere along this journey you will probably find where there have been wires cut and/or spliced. once you find these cuts and splices, take notes and post what/where you found. then we can decipher the puzzle rather quickly. also make notes of wires that you suspect have been "added" to the car in when your ugly yellow lights were installed. PM me your e-mail address and i will E you some factory wiring schematic scans. these scans might be able to guide you and or your helper through the process. digital pics of splices found can help us too.
What Yuk said. Don't worry about the blinking part - that was accomplished with a component that looks like a tiny little can. It has a bi-metalic strip in it. When it heats, the metal bends, breaking the circuit. With no electricity going through, it cools, returning to it's original position, completing the circuit. This lets electricity go through again until it gets hot, etc. That's the least of your worries now, though. You have to figure out the wiring changes as Yuk said.
im thinking most of the magic has happened near the bottom of your column and the flat plug that resides there. here is a primer on how your original system functioned..... although turn signal switches are pretty complex devices, at this time i am only going to explain the portion that controls the REAR turn signals. in a nutshell, here is how the system works when you have a brake light that also is used for your turn signal (brake AND turn signal take turns using the same "bright" filiment in you 1157 bulb). full time power from your car feeds the brake light switch but your turn signal flasher gets power only when the key is on. this way your blinker will go out when you shut the car off (just in case you ever leave the lever engaged). first lets talk about brake lights... when you are not braking, the brake light switch is keeping its contacts OPEN so no bright lights are on at the rear of the car. when you press on your brake pedal, the brake light switch CLOSES and lets voltage flow up your steering column (through a single wire). by the time that voltage passes through the turn signal switch, it has become two different circuits(right and left), each of them heading back down the steering column (as right and left wires) and to the rear of the car terminating at their prespective side, lighting the "bright" filiments giving you brake lights!!! NOW ... lets say you are going to turn LEFT. when you click the lever, your turn signal switch disconnects the wire that goes to your LEFT brake light and re-connects it to the wire that comes from the flasher. this causes the LEFT bulb to flash. while this bulb is flashing you can press the brake pedal and RIGHT bulb will light and stay lit as long as you press the pedal because it has remained connected to the brake wire the whole time. as soon as your corner is finished, the turn signal switch dis-connects the left wire from the flasher wire and reconnects it to the brake light wire. now you are back to normal brake lights.
I haven't had a close inspection, but when the auto-elec shrugged his shoulders at me, and suggested I replace the indicator switch to an early model Holden (GM) one (it used the turn signals as reverse lights) I thought I'd see if you guys could help. when I take a closer look, I'm expecting to see a certain coloured wire cut. I'm assuming I take the pos from the after-market yellow light to the cut one on the brake light enclosure? Anyway, I'll investigate further and report back. Yuk, I'll sned a PM. thanks fellas...
Very interesting how they did that. At least they are seperate from your original lights. I've read about other cars where their factory lights had to be cut up to add country specific colors to the lens. Mick, I think Yuk has got this one. Start looking for molested wires, and post pictures, and the board should provide good advise. :TU:
Will do, but as it's 2.30am, and I've just returned from a Motorhead concert, maybe I'll wait till tomorrow! Thanks for not laughing...
i have always wondered .....long does the song "Ace of Spades" :eek2: ring in your ears after a motorhead concert? that is one band i never got to see. the only chance i had was interupted by a work schedule. i am hoping the schematic i sent you will use the same color assignments for the wires as the "export" wagon originally had. uzzled: that could be our only MAJOR wrench throw into this project. i am not yet for replacing the turn signal switch ..i have yet to believe (in theory) that the wiring of the turn signal switch has been tampered with. my belief is that it will be the wiring harness that plugs into the turnsignal switch.
Hey Deadman Driving! My Skylark had trailer lights on the back,though not as ugly as those things! So I dug around the back and with a bit of fiddling and a test lite,got my indicators working through the tail lites, But the worry is that people here are used to looking for and seeing yellow flashing lites. I could not tell you the number of times that people had near rear ended me or I copped a horn blast to say the least!! So what I did was,get some of those thin yellow running lites for a trailer and mount them below the bumper. That seems to have sorted things out,and you don't really see them until they are working. Check this photo and see what I mean.
Ears are still ringing. It's a concert you enjoy for a few days, I think! Thanks for the schematic, Yuk, I'll try to decipher it. Ruston, I tried a few indicators from a chopper shop, but nothing really stood out, but those clearance lights are very subtle. That may be the answer. I didn't want to drill into the bumper, but it may save a headache, and maybe a rear-ender. I thought we'd seen enough US movies to realise what a flashin red light meant!
One option would be to buy an adapter that lets you power trailers with only 2 red lights from a car with separate turn signal lights and wire it in to your original lights. It should fix the problem. Frank
How difficult would it be to: 1) Find a correct wireing harness in a junkyard 2) Install it? Of course, we have to determine if the original wiring was altered, and altered too much to simply redo. It might be a quick solution, though.
Well, it's going off the road for a few days while an engineer fits the airbags. His auto-elec who is familiar with such things will look at it armed with the knowledge you guys have given me. Thanks. Oh, and by the way Truzi, down here, not too many Buiks anywhere, let alone a junkyard!
wow i thought for a second you talkin about passenger air bags like my 74 electra has... :shock: i think finding/removing/affording/buying and replacing the wiring harness would be alot more difficult than resplicing the original wires back together ...even if some of the splices needed small sections added to be complete. ... the only circumstance that i would feel presueded to replace the harness would be if for some reason the original harness had several melted sections of wire.
scary part is ....since the car has air bags (ACRS) ... it DONT have shoulder belts, only lap belt equipped.
