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Turn signals and indicator light

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Anthony_S

Anthony_S

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Well I am recently the proud new owner of a 1960 TR3a. It was my father inlaws and has now been passed on to me. I am excited about having this but I am quite the rookie really. The car is in great shape and runs well but I want to get to know it better. So Im sure I am going to be on here often looking for help :smile: So here is my first question......

Maybe this is normal but my front turn signals can't really be seen when all the lights are on. It is like the parking light is so bright it over powers the signal when it is flashing. I can see the second filament flashing in there when i look close. It is fine when the parking lights arn't on because it isn't competing with the other light....my random thought is that maybe it is wired backwards or the bulb is going out. Any thoughts?

Also, my dash indicator light does not come on when the signals are used. I know it works because I did some messing around with the flasher relay, switching the wires around thinking that may be the problem and during that the indicator light would come on when i flipped the signal on but then the signal would not come on...weird i thought, so i put it back the way it was so i had turn signals but i have no indicator. Any thoughts on that?

Thanks in advance for any help :smile:
-Anthony
 
Sounds to me like your front lights are indeed wired wrong. The turn filament is supposed to be much brighter than the marker filament.

That may also be why the dash light doesn't work. Some flashers are deliberately sensitive to the amount of current drawn by the lamps (so you can tell when a lamp is burned out) and do funny things (like flash too fast or not light the dash light) when the current is not what they expect.

So I would deal with the front lights first; and then if that doesn't solve the problem with the dash light, buy a replacement flasher from an LBC supplier (like Moss or TRF). The ones at Autozone, etc frequently don't work right in our cars.

Or one choice that does work right and is frequently found at your FLAPS ("friendly local auto parts store" or alternatively "full line auto parts store") is the Tridon EL13 "electronic" flasher. That's what I use, as I don't really care that it looks out of place on a TR.

PS, be warned that there are a lot of wiring diagrams that claim to be right for our cars and aren't. If it doesn't show 5 lamps in the rear, it's the wrong diagram.

PPS, the wires from the front lights should come up to junction sleeves in the area behind the horns on each side of the engine compartment. Lots easier to swap wires there than having to remove the grille, IMO. Let us know if you need more help.
 
Hey Randall,

Thanks for the info. I will look into rewiring those front flasher lights. Would you happen to have the correct wiring diagram I could get or direct me to it?

Thanks again
Anthony
 
Anthony, it's pretty simple (assuming the front lamps themselves are wired correctly). A red wire from the lamp would be the "side" (parking) filament and should connect to a red wire in the harness. On the LH lamp, the green wire from the lamp should connect to a green-with-red-tracer wire in the harness, and the green wire from the RH lamp should connect to a green-with-white-tracer wire in the harness.

Of course, if that's how it all turns out to be wired, you can be painfully correct and remove the lamps and swap the red and green wires on the lamp body to get the correct filaments lighting at the correct time. You can also swap the connections at the harness, but having it all "correct" will make future troubleshooting for you (or a future owner) easier. I would think there's enough "slack" in the wiring to allow you to unscrew the lamp body from the grille if necessary, rather than removing the grille itself. But then it's been many years since I've done anything like this on a 3A!
 
DNK said:
Randall, never asked, but are Dan's correct?
https://www.advanceautowire.com/tr24a.pdf
Click to expand...
Those look to be very nearly correct. TS39781LO didn't have the OD wired that way, and the comment on the heater wire is wrong, IMO. (On early cars, the factory wired it to the wiper switch, as written in the workshop manual. I believe later cars with the self-parking wipers had it to the fuel gauge terminal.) The wire between control head and turn flasher is not right (on LHD cars, the control head wire joins with that connector that is shown hanging out in space).

There are also some minor variations that didn't get captured, like on earlier cars with the self-parking wipers (like TS13571L) the green wire for the brake light switch runs over to the wiper motor terminal instead of the fuse block. Some cars had the in-line fuse for dash & tail lights, but still used a switch for the dash lights (instead of the rheostat).

Those diagrams are also more difficult to use, IMO, than the factory diagrams because they don't show anything about the routing of the wires.

But to be fair to Dan, he did ask for my input and I failed to return the marked-up drawings to him. They got lost and never mailed. So you can point your finger at me, if you like.
 
Hello Everyone,

Well I am happy to say that I did get this fixed for the most part :smile: The wiring was indeed backwards on the parking lights and indicator lights. So a few swapping of wires and now I have turn signals that can be seen in the dark, yay! The thing that remains is the indicator light on the dash still does not light up when the signals are on. Like i said before the light works, because when i i was messing around with the flasher unit, switching wires, the indicator dash light would come on but the blinkers would not work. So it was one or the other, i figured the blinkers were a little more important, hehe. Im thinking it is still a wiring issue but not sure what to do......what do you all think??

thanks
anthony!
 
I wonder if it has to do with the hazard switch and circuit, on my TR6 the hazard switch is a self wiping/cleaning switch and if you dont use it often and flip it to hazard postion and back and the contacts dont make the turn singals dont work or work intermetiantly

just a though

Hondo
 
Anthony_S said:
Hello Everyone,

Well I am happy to say that I did get this fixed for the most part :smile: The wiring was indeed backwards on the parking lights and indicator lights. So a few swapping of wires and now I have turn signals that can be seen in the dark, yay! The thing that remains is the indicator light on the dash still does not light up when the signals are on. Like i said before the light works, because when i i was messing around with the flasher unit, switching wires, the indicator dash light would come on but the blinkers would not work. So it was one or the other, i figured the blinkers were a little more important, hehe. Im thinking it is still a wiring issue but not sure what to do......what do you all think??

thanks
anthony!
Click to expand...

Start with something simple: is the dash turn-indicator light bulb burned out? Or even simpler: is the socket corroded? I used a small ignition file to clean the bulb contacts *and* the socket contacts.

Tom
 
hey tom,

like i said i know that part works. early on i tried switching th wires around on the flasher unit thinking maybe something was hooked up wrong. the results were in one configuration the dash light would come on and stay on but the blinkers did not work. other configurations it did not work but the blinkers worked. so i know the bulb is good and the connections are good.

thanks
anthony
 
Anthony_S said:
Im thinking it is still a wiring issue but not sure what to do......what do you all think??
Click to expand...
I doubt it is wiring, but it's easy enough to check. Turn the key on, and install a temporary jumper between the green and light green wires at the flasher. If the dash light now comes on (solid), the wiring is OK.

My guess, as I mentioned before, is that your flasher doesn't work right. Either a proper replacement from an LBC vendor, or a Tridon EL13 from FLAPS should fix the problem. I went through every other kind of 3-terminal flasher that my FLAPS had in stock, and none of them worked right.
 
hey randall,

thanks for the info, i will get myself one of those and check it out.

thanks again
anthony
 
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