New Turn Signal Wiring Challenge

What kind of flasher relay are you using?

Small round can with two leads or the OEM VW flasher about the size of a pack of cigarettes with four wires going to it?

I may have a wiring diagram for your switch.  I’ll check later this evening when I get home.

@Gordon Nichols posted:

What kind of flasher relay are you using?

Small round can with two leads or the OEM VW flasher about the size of a pack of cigarettes with four wires going to it?

I may have a wiring diagram for your switch.  I’ll check later this evening when I get home.

Thanks, Gordon.  

Small round can with two leads.  

Here’s the wiring diagram.  I wired it accordingly, and still no joy.  After that, I just started trying different combinations to see if I could get any flashes at all.  Nope.

I spoke with Russ at Fibersteel today, and he said it was unlikely I shorted out the relay, and he also said that with today’s Chinese supplies, there’s always a chance I got a bad switch.   But, most likely I’m missing something.  

I was hoping I was doing something obviously wrong that someone might spot.   I’ll go after it again next weekend.  

Got home and looked but everything I have is for VW, 1969 or later so it would probably just confuse things.   Sorry.  

Thanks for checking, Gordon.  

What is the make and year of your car?  

From the one photo I see it looks like one of my early Gen 2 Beck cars, that has updated carpet somewhere along the way, however then I noticed your steering column splines and they are Gen 1 specific...

What is the year or part number of your turn signal unit?

Some year VWs (and early Gen 2 Becks) have the brake light pass through the turn signal unit, and the turn signal unit breaks power to one brake light when the tire signal is engaged, allowing it to flash.  On later cars the brake switch is wired directly to the taillights and use an inline trailer box to break the turn signal.  Of course this assumes your taillights are a single dual element bulb and thus you have a bulb intended for 2 functions that has to do 3 functions.  Unfortunately there are lots of variables here that will affect how you wire this up.  Likewise, sometimes taking an older switch with newer style wiring will create other issues, such as brake lights back feeding to a front turn signal, but his can be remedied with a diode wired inline on the fronts.  I'm happy to help, but need a better starting point so I know what you're working with.

@chines1 -- Carey -- good morning, Sir, and thank you very much for your response. 

My Spyder is a 2012 Thunder Ranch. 

Flashers were operational before I removed the existing turn signal switch.

The prior signal unit is pictured below, and had 5 wires.  One wire is for the flasher relay, one wire is for the left signals, one wire is for the right signals, and the remaining two wires are for the dimmer switch.   I have toned out these wires, so I know I have them labeled correctly. 

My turn signal unit is brand new, and has six wires, and also included a separate dimmer button. It's pictured in my original post.  The wiring diagram for this new unit is attached above, about three responses ago.  With it this new unit, one wire is for the flasher unit, two wires are for the left signals, two wires are for the right signals, and one wire is for the brake.  I have isolated the brake wire with a wire nut.

My car has an inline trailer box, pictured below.  I'm assuming it's operational, but don't know for sure.  Are these prone to going bad?  Again, it was operational prior to me removing the existing turn signal unit.

I have hooked up the new dimmer button to the two dimmer switch wires already wired on the car (which is now working properly), and have hooked up the flasher relay wire from the new switch to the existing flasher relay wire on the car.

In my novice thinking, it seems all I have to do now is wire the two left signal wires on the new switch to the solitary left signal wire on the car, and then hook up the two right signal wires from the new switch to the solitary right signal wire on the car.  But, no joy.

I'm going to put a meter on the output of the flasher relay, and if it's okay, put a jumper from the flasher relay directly to the one of the existing turn signal wires on the car and see if the new signal switch is the problem. 

Am I following the correct path? 

I have to make some assumptions on the TR wiring, and the few I have serviced were wired completely differently form each other, but I think I can still help...

You have 2 different type systems and have to make them happy.  The car originally was NOT made for brake light through the switch and used a trailer box, the new switch is made for that.  That said, I just CANNOT recall if the brake wire matters and I think you can just bypass it and use the 3 wires for the turns and not worry about the brake wire.

Thus, I believe your thought process is exactly correct on the way you have wired it.  You can verify that by checking continuity from your black/green/white (b/g/w) - (INPUT from the flasher relay) to your black/green - (OUTPUT to right side turn lamps) with the switch turn on for right turns, and then from b/g/w to black/white - (OUTPUT to left side turn lamps).  You are simply connecting the flasher to these bulbs via the switch.  If that doesn't work then start looking back in the system at the flasher relay, power to it, and the trailer box.  They have a low failure rate, and even worse the new ones are made for LEDs and 90% of them will not work with incandescent bulbs, so replacement will not be straight forward (I do have the one current brand that will work with incandescent).  I'd be curious to look at an old VW diagram and see how the brake wire interacts and if the relay NEEDS and power input form the brake wire.  Again, it's just been too long...  

The other issue you may run into is that having a single output for the left side and a single output for the right side, you MAY get backfeed from the brake lights to the front turn signals.  The trailer box should prevent this, just depends on how the car is wired.  Worst case scenario is you have to put a diode inline on the front lights to prevent backed when the brake are pushed (and also check the fronts with brake pushed and turn signal switched on).  BIT first you have to get them working and this is secondary and easily remedied...

@chines1 --

Thank you very much, Carey!  This is great stuff, and I'm grateful for you sharing your thoughts and experience. 

I'm anxious to get after it again this weekend, and I'm going to remain optimistic that I'm close to getting this figured out! 

I will report back with my progress.  😉

OK I gotta jump in here at the risk of muddying the waters. When I put my Spyder together I had all kinds of questions about the "trailer box" that everyone was using. And my turn signal switch had (as I recall) the six wires, without a headlight dipper. This pleased me, as I was keen to use a floor button for the high beams (as original).

Through trial and error, I made the turn signal switch work, without resorting to the trailer box.

The key was hooking up the brake light wire.

I wish I could say I documented all this on the blog. Or in my thread on here. I did not.

Anyway, that's all I got. Apologies for not taking more care to document that part of my build.

@Wulfrik (John) posted:

My car has an inline trailer box, pictured below.  I'm assuming it's operational, but don't know for sure.  Are these prone to going bad?

In my experience, yes. I replaced mine twice, and am 0 for 3.

After this happened, I went with relays and wired it all up for turn signals and 4 way flashers. When I built my new car, I changed the flasher in the picture to an LED unit from Audew(Amazon Chinesium), and all bulbs are LED. It works great. There are a couple diodes in line for the hazard relays to prevent backfeed of power. It looks complicated but it's really not. The external wires that go to this are 12v constant hot, brake switch cold side, L and R from turn switch, and the 4 corners of the car.

I used most of a schematic found online. My car uses the 1967-ish switch, which sounds identical to the 5 wire one that WAS in your car, John.

I can't find the exact one I used, and thought I had saved a copy. But I can't locate it.

Perhaps this can help though:

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/fo...ewtopic.php?t=570185

Cheers.

Trailer boxes are crappy, but they're $15. I don't have one, and I wired my bus with relays, but I think if I did it again I'd just push the Easy Button. The crappy trailer boxes are easy. I'd get two, wire one in with a weatherpack connector, take it out and put the second one if with the same connector, then carry the spare in my trunkette.

I know it's cheesy, but sometimes cheesy is what's called for.

Fifteen bucks.

.

Like Ed, I don't want to muddy these waters, but I'm afraid any technical comments here will do that. So, bottom line, do whatever Carey suggests. Period.

But, here are some things to consider.

First, I once had to hook up a small boat trailer with two-bulb lights to a car that had three separate bulbs for the three functions (tail light, turn signal, and brake lights).

At the time, I didn't know such things as trailer boxes existed, so, having some electronics classes in my cv, I reasoned I could build my own circuit with a few well-placed relays. It took me about an hour of staring at a blank sheet of paper and considerable mental anguish to figure out just what the problem was and how to solve it, but in the end I drew a circuit, got some relays from Radio Shack, soldered them together in a little plastic 'project' box, and Eureka! It worked. Another triumph for science.

I mention this, because it does help to understand the electrical trickery that's going on in that trailer box. When I saw that your turn switch has a lead for 'brake lights', I was puzzled, but I think I get what's going on here. My hunch is that the switch incorporates the same sort of circuitry that's in the trailer box, so trying to use the two of them together may be a problem. Again, I don't know, but this may help to sort things out.

And I did come across this discussion on the Samba which seems to explain just which switch you've got, with the original VW wiring diagram that shows how that switch was wired. It seems to have been a one-year-only switch for the 1961 VW.

It does show separate outputs for front and rear lights. This might be necessary to avoid the cross-feeding between brake lights and front signals that Carey mentioned. If I had to guess, I'd say that switch also has diodes inside to prevent that.

And again, I hope this sheds more light than mud.

@DannyP posted:

In my experience, yes. I replaced mine twice, and am 0 for 3.

After this happened, I went with relays and wired it all up for turn signals and 4 way flashers. When I built my new car, I changed the flasher in the picture to an LED unit from Audew(Amazon Chinesium), and all bulbs are LED. It works great. There are a couple diodes in line for the hazard relays to prevent backfeed of power. It looks complicated but it's really not. The external wires that go to this are 12v constant hot, brake switch cold side, L and R from turn switch, and the 4 corners of the car.

I used most of a schematic found online. My car uses the 1967-ish switch, which sounds identical to the 5 wire one that WAS in your car, John.

I can't find the exact one I used, and thought I had saved a copy. But I can't locate it.

Perhaps this can help though:

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/fo...ewtopic.php?t=570185

Cheers.

Nicely done relay setup @DannyP

Gentlemen, Thanks again for all of the advice a great information.  As usual, the ideas and conversation from the Brain Trust pointed me in the right direction, and again I learned new things and took my technical skills up a notch.

To close the loop on this >> I was able to get it all working this weekend.

I thought about it all Friday evening, searching more on the issue on this forum, as well as the Samba.  I was excited and I got up early on Saturday to go at it. 

During the week I had purchased a multimeter, and so first order of business was energizing the new turn signal switch and testing each wire for voltage.  Each wire on the new switch (left front, left rear, right front, right rear) had ~12v.  So, that eliminated the possibility of a bad switch and the flasher relay had correct voltage as well.

I was flummoxed, but a comment on an old post on the Samba got me to thinking.  The commenter advised that since the car's wiring had one wire for the left, and one wire for the right, that all one had to do -- irrespective of how many signaling wires were on the new switch -- was to match the number of wires from the new switch to each.

So, I attached the "Front Left" wire from the new switch to the "Left" wire for the car, and attached the "Front Right" wire from the new switch to the "Right" wire for the car.  I then clipped and sealed the wires for "Rear Left" and "Rear Right."  I also clipped and sealed the "Brake Light" wire from the new switch.  For good measure (as the wiring gods can be fickle and I'm a friggin' novice with this stuff, and what the hell), I also switched the wires on the dimmer button from one pole to the other.

Eureka!  That did it.  :-)

I've attached a pic of the new steering wheel I installed along with the new switch, and you can see I changed out the pulls and shift knob to ivory as well.  I love the look, as to me it looks more vintage (even though I know 550s had wooden steering wheels back in the 50s).

Collateral damage:

• The new wheel is flat, so I have my arms stretched out completely -- Italian driving position style -- so I'll be mounting adjustable seat rails.
• The larger wheel is in the way of a reverse shift with my tall, vintage Beetle shifter.  I can just get it by, but I'm going to shorten it a bit. 

Thanks again to all!  I know this was a bit long, but maybe someone will learn from it in the future here on the forum. 

@Wulfrik (John)  "Thanks again to all!  I know this was a bit long, but maybe someone will learn from it in the future here on the forum. "

What we do here is send all the information to our staff writer for him to include it in the “how to manual”  as he know how best to elucidate the work to be done… Isn’t that right @Stan Galat 

@IaM-Ray posted:

@Wulfrik (John)  "Thanks again to all!  I know this was a bit long, but maybe someone will learn from it in the future here on the forum. "

What we do here is send all the information to our staff writer for him to include it in the “how to manual”  as he know how best to elucidate the work to be done… Isn’t that right @Stan Galat 

Ray, my writeup doesn't compare to some of the expertise that was shown from others responding to my post, but you never can tell.  Perhaps my newbie-speak will resonate with someone.

.

@Wulfrik (John) , good show!

I do have one question, though: do the rear turn signals still flash when your foot is on the brake?

You’ll probably need a helper to find out, or just check in a darkened garage.

@Sacto Mitch posted:

.

@Wulfrik (John) , good show!

I do have one question, though: do the rear turn signals still flash when your foot is on the brake?

You’ll probably need a helper to find out, or just check in a darkened garage.

Thank you, Mitch!

Yes, the rears blink when the brake is applied.

Oh, and since my honey (and helper) was out of town this past weekend, I grabbed a big antique mirror that's been hanging around in the garage and propped it on the bumper of our Tahoe parked in the driveway.  ;-) 

That was funny

@Wulfrik (John),  is that turn signal switch you are using from a 1956-59 Beetle?  

@LI-Rick posted:

@Wulfrik (John),  is that turn signal switch you are using from a 1956-59 Beetle?  

Rick -- I purchased mine in a steering wheel kit from Fibersteel. 

It's a six wire version, and appears to be identical to this:  https://www.cip1.ca/vwc-113-953-513-a/

JBugs and others sell a similar version, too. 

@Wulfrik (John) posted:

Rick -- I purchased mine in a steering wheel kit from Fibersteel.

It's a six wire version, and appears to be identical to this:  https://www.cip1.ca/vwc-113-953-513-a/

JBugs and others sell a similar version, too.

Thanks, that is what it looks like to me also.

@Wulfrik (John) posted:

Ray, my writeup doesn't compare to some of the expertise that was shown from others responding to my post, but you never can tell.  Perhaps my newbie-speak will resonate with someone.

Well between the writing the signaling and the banter you will certainly fit in here.  The only thing you left to do is adopt MusbJim’s reference of the long haired general, or the one who must be obeyed.  

@IaM-Ray posted:

Well between the writing the signaling and the banter you will certainly fit in here.  The only thing you left to do is adopt MusbJim’s reference of the long haired general, or the one who must be obeyed.  

Thank you, Ray!  My own moniker is Head of Household Operations. 😉