I have an 86 E150 ford van with no turn signals.

The brake lights work. The connector out of the steering column appears to be well connected. The flasher is good because it works on another Ford van. The hazzard flasher works flashing the lights all the way around.

The turn signal flasher has voltage on both sides when the turn signal switch is in netural position. When the switch is cut on either way, current is lost to the flasher.

The odd part was, the turn signals started working for a few days then stopped again.

I thought that there is supposed to be voltage to the flasher all the time when the ign. switch in on and that voltage goes to a center point in the turn signal mechanism where it is directed to the left or right bulb that causes the flasher to tick on and off because of the current draw from the bulb.

If that's the case, I don't see how everthing could be dead back to the flasher when the switch is thrown.

Thanks

Charles

 

Bad connection upstream from the flasher. Your meter uses very little current to read the voltage. But the lighting uses a lot more, and this will cause a voltage drop through whatever is causing the problem.

 

I had a tail light bulb in my hand with a ground clamp on the metal case and then touched a jumper wire to the bulb prong right from the wire where it connects to the flasher. I had battery voltage from the flasher through that jumber to the bulb prong. But when I touched it to the bulb, it didn't flash and the volt meter slammed back down to zero volts off that draw.

I concluded that somewhere there was a hot side connection that wasn't tight enough to carry that bulb load (and there was no telling where it was at at or how hard to get to), so I just ran a permanent jumper wire tapping into the fuse block to that flasher plug in and that gave me back my turn signals again.

Charles

 

Your Fast!

That's what it was. I think we posted at the same time.

Thanks

Charles