My turn siginal lights do not come on in the dashboard. I can hear the blinker but neither left or right lights come on. The bulbs are not burnt out.
Please help! Thank You, Weston

 

Does the outside front turn signals work?

 

Yes all outside blinkers work. The bulbs in the dashboard do not turn on. Left or Right do not come on. I can hear the blinkers.

 

Ok you need to remove the instrument cluster and check the wires for power with the turn signals on, at the instrument cluster connector.

Left Hand Front Turn signal and Indicator: Light Green/white stripe wire.
Right Hand Front Turn signal and Indicator: White/Light Blue Stripe.

A: If you got power at these wires, then the problem is in the instrument cluster. Either a bad printed circut, ground, connection at the cluster connector, or bad bulbs.

B: If you do not have power, then the wires are at fault between the instrument cluster connector and the splice where the wires wye off to go to the front turn signal lamps. The wires wye off at the steering column connector, same color as mentioned above. Check for power there as well on all four wires you find there.

 

if you find a bad connection on the printed circuit board is there anything you can do to repair it? that is, let's say you can see a slight break in one of the connections in the plastic ribbon. could you apply something like a rear defogger repair kit to it to try and bridge the broken connection?

 

The proper thing to do would be to replace the printed circut with a new one.

However I'm not sure how a rear defogger repair kit would work, as the circut is copper foil glued and moulded onto a plastic sheet. I'm thinking it wouldn't work, but never tried it.

 

I have soldered such a repair in the past, just solder a small (I used 20-22 gauge) wire
onto both sides of the break to bridge the connection.

Obviously, you need to be careful, clean everything adequately, protect underlying plastic
components from the heat, etc. etc. etc.

 

If the signal lights all work, aside from the dash indicators, I'd start by checking the bulbs and sockets in the cluster. The sockets can get a little corrosion on the contacts, both where they meet the printed circuit and where the bulbs go. Sometimes, it's as simple as twisting the sockets loose, and pulling the bulbs out, then put the bulbs back in and reinsert the sockets, to make them magically work again.

 

yeah, i considered solder but it looked really really really risky. that ribbon is very thin plastic and i was afraid the heat from the solder gun could easily ruin the entire ribbon.

when i had mine out it looked like there was a super thin break in one of the circuits on the ribbon right where it connects to the plastic plug. that is, in the ribbon where it connects to the plastic plug the copper portions inside the ribbon are exposed so they can connect up to the wiring in the plug. in mine at one of the bends it looked like one of the copper lines might have broke. i put some window defogger on it and put it back together. i don't know what it powered so i'm not sure if it actually fixed anything or not. but then yesterday when i was in the truck i noticed the left turn signal is not blinking inside the truck but the right is and i hear it flashing. also confirmed it's working fine outside so hopefully it's just the bulb.

 

I used a soldering *iron* and not a gun.

What are the wire's colors?

 

Thanks for the dash board turn signal help. I really appreciate the help. Thanks, Weston

 

Thank you very much for your help. Thanks, Weston