Today's adventure, left and right turn signal failure in the morning. Failure was total on the dash indicators and no sign of reflection of signal off the vehicle ahead.

Once at work in the lot, parked, I could watch the left rear tail light. With the brake applied, the brake light did its usual bright light up but that would dim if I pulled the turn signal for a left turn, quite repeatable. (Not sure that means anything... but was an observation.)

<inject work day>
<eventual escape from work day>

Parking lot test before leaving work, turn signals were back.. sort of. Dash indication and actual turn signal observation was initially sluggish, with a variable blink-rate (?) initially but then almost normal. This was typical most of the way home (4 miles and 4 turns split evenly left and right) but again, had total lack of signal the last couple of blocks from home.. both left and right.

At last at home, with a fine soft rain to hand, I:
Pulled and reset fuse, no change.
Pulled flasher and installed my new spare. (Yes, I carry spare flashers.) No change.
For giggles, I hit the hazards and got strong, standard and steady flashers on all corners.

Hrmmmmmm...

So, I pulled a new spare multi-function switch out.. (Okay, I don't really carry a spare all the time! I'd picked one up for the pickup and the R&W Bronco to slap intermittent wiper issues. But they were still 'in box'. It just worked out that way. Really.)

One fresh multi-function switch later, driveway test was the expected solid and steady signal for both left and right.

In the process of changing out the multi-function switch I did pull the Neg. battery connection prior to pulling the ignition switch to allow removal of the upper steering wheel shroud. Though there were still bright shiny connections on the post and terminal I did give both a bit of the brush prior to reconnecting the battery. I did not try this prior to the change out of the switch.

Feel free to debate the battery ground as a cause. I cannot fully rule that out, however, based on the condition of the contact prior to my touch up... I don't think so. If you are suffering a similar affliction, I would certainly recommend a quick clean up of the ground .. even if you already have a spare multi-function switch. Tis cheap..

I believe that this is 'done'. However, if symptoms resurface I shall update this.

Nick

 

It's great that you solved your problem, but I wouldn't debate on the battery, figuring out which one was the real cause would be easy: re-install the old switch, if the problem reappears then it was the cause, no matter what the condition of the battery was.