Re: Restoring Rusty
 

so back in December of 2018 I gave my truck a proper gauge overhaul by completely abandoning the factory OEM circuit board based cluster and it's accompanying analog gauges in favor of the Intellitronix (pronounced: cheapest) digital ones, and for the most part I have been happy with them.

The most part is comprised of me being 100% happy with the Volt, Fuel, Oil, and Temp quartet (other than should have gone with white instead of the green display) these little guys have been completely headache free. However I can't say the same thing for the larger Speedo and Tach. First they arrived not properly assembled right off the bat, then I sent them back for free repairs and one came back glued back on crooked, and I spent a year trying to get them to work reliably (would wig out with the blinkers and or headlights on) , which I finally managed to do by running completely separate ground leads for each these two gauges absolutely did not like to share their grounds no matter what, although ultimately the leads go to the same ground bolt under the dash, go figure.

In addition to the gauges I also built my own warning lights, simple stuff a red brake light (that never works) a yellow Check Engine Light, a blue high beams light, and two green turn signal lights. These lights is what we are going to focus on today, as they have their own story.

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

so I am on the home stretch with this truck and this is simply about tying up loose ends, so let me list the electrical issues as of this [ahem] ... morning, ha ha

1. the original green turn signal LEDs glow white not green

2. the red brake warning light, which I assume ought to light up on first key on then dissipate, never ever turns on, so I doubt it will glow as I am heading off a cliff

3. there must be a short somewhere in the turn signal circuit as the left turn signal works, ie flashes, but the right one just stays on I think (I may have this backwards)

4. the left (driver) turn signal bulb the one in the fender just faintly lights up and may flicker

5. I forget, but I'm sure there's more problems, so this is a place holder

so I ordered a second set of these LEDs from All Electronics and am ready to do some touch ups

couple observations since I first installed them, they are plastic, so they are pretty flimzy especially the threads on the barrel as you try and screw on the backing o ring type of thing, second, their male blade connectors are so tiny that I think I finally found the proper female ends to go on them, I think they are the 3 mil ones and not the 1/4" etc

Note: I solder all my connections to ensure proper connectivity so these being plastic sucks, as they tend to heat up and melt a bit just enough for the male blade connector to sink back into the plastic housing, cry me a river, right?!

I’m glad you’ve come to your senses and “appropriated” your kids stimulus money and invested it properly (Rusty) instead of buying them a different car😆

I think the turn signal light staying solid and not flashing means an open in the circuit. Such as a bulb being burnt out. Or if it’s the left aide that dim fender bulb Could be the culprit.
Posted via Mobile Device

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

love it, I mean can you imagine me going down to only two trucks, I would be the laughing stock of this forum, ha ha

Hahahahaha!

I have three also. I’m not allowed to sell any of them. My kids have claimed and named my trucks. Not as eloquently as your naming scheme mind you but named nonetheless.
There’s the “off road truck” 72 K10, “the new truck” 86 K30 crew and “the new new truck” 88 crew.
Posted via Mobile Device

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

are you kidding me those are great names, the ORT, the NT, and my favorite the Double New Double Eight (well, that's all I got)

😂

I have a couple more.
The Nukon. Because when I sold our Yukon and bought an Escalade... Escalade wasn’t nearly as catchy as the New Yukon which eventually was abbreviated to simply The Nukon.
Posted via Mobile Device

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

so got the ol' gauge cluster on the AW-WB (Absent Wife - Work Bench) and I like to use stainless pots as a soldering aid but you do you, if teflon is your thing, use teflon, I really don't care

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

Public Service Announcement: these hard plastic shielded butt connectors are the worst, do NOT use them, ever !!!

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

well found one problem with the Red brake light, it was bad plug in that short pig tail between the harness and the proportioning valve, this is the last piece I would have guessed would have failed, there are absolutely no moving pieces in this thing, yet it did

I honestly do not get the purpose of this 9" pig tail, why not just run the harness directly to the switch on the valve itself, which is what I did

of course my fix worked in testing but stopped as soon as I put the dash all back together, LOL

Lesson Learned: when it works it does NOT turn on with the key ON, it does however come on momentarily as you crank the engine over in the START position, then goes out again, makes sense I guess, not sure the juice is worth the squeeze on this one, if I were to re wire / re gauge another truck I would not bother with the red brake light I would not install one, not worth the headache

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

now as far as my Left (aka driver side) turn signal problem, technically it ain't a turn signal problem, the turn signals work fine, all of them

the problem is the parking light or what ever you want to call it, the left aka driver orange parking light in the left fender does NOT come on

here are the facts:

1. there is a light brown wire that runs from the black square bulk head connector on the firewall to both the left and the right side parking lights

2a. a light blue wire runs from the same bulk head connector to the left (driver) side orange parking light in the fender

2a. a dark blue wire runs from the same bulk head connector to the right (passanger) side orange parking light in the fender

TROUBLESHOOTING

teach me something because my testing shows I am a total ignoramous

I thought the light blue and the dark blue wires were supposed to be positive and when touched to ground with a test light the test light should illuminate, but that is not what happens in my case, the opposite is true, the light comes on when with an alligator clip on the light or dark blue wires when I touch the pointy end of the test light to the positive terminal on the battery, but whatever I think the blue wires are for the turn signals and those seem to work

now the brown wire I assume is the common wire for the parking lights both left and right, so I don't get why I get no signal / power in it at the left fender, I think I need to unwrap it all all the way back to the bulk head and examine every inch for splice-atalogy problems

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

It's not a good sign when the task does not even receive a fun level rating. Good luck man.

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

LOL, yup, this task is yet to be rated, your comment on the other hand ...

Comment Level: Expert

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

Hahaha

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

I'm glad to see that Rusty is getting some love.

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

yup, me too, but he's been a little shiet lately

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

Do tell...

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

ha ha, short answer: bad (yet fully functional) sister parking light bulb aka the one below the headlight above the bumper!?

full report @ 11:00

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

so basically in order to fix this Parking Light

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

... we had to replace a perfectly good in working order light bulb in this Parking Light

We will just file this repair in our "I hit myself in the head with a hammer cause it feels good when I stop" folder and collectively move on.

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

Wait, what? Inquiring minds want to know how I fingered it out?

Alright, after all you are under quarantine, or as I like to call it a captive audience, ha ha

so on a serious note I want to share what I went through because it can actually help somebody out and maybe knock off a year or two off the time it takes to fix this, ha ha

Here's how I went about it. I wanted to figure how these lights worked and not just hack at it until it worked.

The first thing you need to do is figure out how a component works, in this case what each wire does. This was simple enough as the pig tail in question only had two pig tails, a light blue wire and a brown wire.

Now here's a Top Tip: when trying to figure out how something works, doing so when it is broken is definitely not the time to do it. Lucky for us we had another turn signal / marker just like this one on the other side in working order, so we employed our Stare and Compare methodology.

this allowed us to quickly pick up on the fact that although each light had a different color blue wire (drive side light blue, passenger side dark blue) they each shared the same brown wire, this allowed us to Divide and Conquer even further.

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

since the turn signals were working we focused on the brown wire, to simplicate things even further and eliminate the fuse panel and the light switch, I removed the bulk head connector off the firewall and alligator cliped a power lead from the battery positive terminal directly to the brown wire pin on the back side of the bulkhead connector - and watched three of the four marker lights illuminate

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

after poking and probing with a test light and things not making sense I decided to yank the front marker light (the one below the headlight) and stare at it

this one made sense, in addition to the brown wire which we know sends the parking light signal, and the light blue wire which is the left turn signal signal (ha ha) it had a third wire, unlike the side marker light, it had a black wire which was the GROUND! now that makes sense color wires send the +++++ pluseses and the GROUND carries the ----- minuses (I know that's not how electricity actually flows, so please don't call the Electrode Police on me just yet I is just explaining things)

so how the hewk does our little guy in the fender get it's ground? he don't have a metal housing so it cant be contact with the sheet metal

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

why it has to be getting it's ground through the light blue wire somehow, there is no other choice

so I poked at it some more with my test light and nothing, so once again I went to the working side and sure enough with the test light alligator clip connected to the battery positive terminal when I poked at the dark blue wire connector inside the socket it acted as a ground and the test light lit up

so back I went to the bad side and hooked up a long black wire lead from the battery negative terminal to an exposed section of the light blue wire at a Y junction as a temporary bypass and sure enough the side marker parking light came on - SAY WHAT?

I know right it don't make no sense, but now we knew how to make it work so lets press on

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

so here's what we knew at this point

1. both side and front left marker lights need a ground to function

2. the front market light has a black ground wire the side marker light does not

so how do we send a ground signal from the front market light with the ground wire to the side marker light?

answer: via the stinkin' light bulb

somehow in some way the light bulb takes the ground signal from the front marker light and shares it with the side marker light via the light blue wire (I honestly still don't understand this magic, but I accept it)

I also do not comprehend why a good working light bulb was insufficient to send the ground signal, but a different one of the same model number was

I even cleaned it thinking it was dirty contacts and no dice, when I moved the bulb from the working side to the non working side it would work, when I went the other way it would not, luckily I found another working bulb in my stash

pic of a bulb that would not work though it matched the working bulb exactly, this is the one I cleaned the contacts on after taking the pic

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

Gee.... I wonder why it took you 4 years to figure out. The solution was clear as mud.

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

Impressive, nice work; I'll definitely try and hold on to this gem in my memory bank!

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

If I remember correctly, the side marker and the front signal flash in an alternating pattern, right?

If so, I would think the side marker gets its ground from the front signal bulb when it is NOT activated. Therefore is lit when parking lights/headlights are on giving power to the side marker and ground thru the Front signal bulb.

When front signal is activated, the ground goes to the front signal bulb to light it and stops at the side marker. Therefore alternating the flash. Side, Front, Side Front, etc.

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

Interesting, I just went out and tested it on my '74 and nope, they dingle at the same time. The light blue wire simply has a Y splice and one end goes to the side marker and the other to the front marker. Same deal on the other side but its a dark blue wire.

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

I think the ground for lights are right at radiator support or was that the Trans Am. I am pretty sure the grounds are right under the where the fender attaches.

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

Correct but those grounds go to the front marker lights, there are no black ground wires going to the side marker lights.

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

So I am "working" from home today and looked at my 85. They do flash together. I don't remember where I saw the alternating thing.

I also tested the turn-signal flasher has 2 prongs and it has 12 volts power on one side and, when activated, will flash 12 volts power to the other side. seems like there would have to be a full time ground somewhere.

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

The factory wiring makes the side markers alternate with the front turns.

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

thanks, wish you had some squares to go out and test it for yourself like Jay and I did, question for you: are the front marker lights wired to both the turn signal switch (via the light and dark blue wires) and the headlight switch (via the brown wire) or just one or the other?

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

Yes it uses the grounds thru the turn signal/park lampo on the front. When 12V for park lights is run thru the brown wire, it goes back to the front lamp thru the blue, then to ground. When turn signal is on, the blue line becomes the alternating 12V feed, and interrupts the ground that was in the side marker blue feed (thus it blinks). Took me a while to figure out that the front was the ground, but still not sure if all the science behind it is set in my mind yet.

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

Thank you Bill, so on your '81 do the front and side markers alternate when they flicker or do they flicker in unison?

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

The side marker grounds through the signal lamp except when the signal lamp is powered.
Light Blue is LH Turn power
Dark Blue is RH Turn power
Brown is Parking lamp power

The peanut bulbs in the side markers are connected from one of the blue wires to a brown wire.
The 1157 bulb is the only one that's connected directly to a ground.

It's behavior is more complex than I stated originally.

The side marker and front turns alternate when the parking lamps are on.
They operate in sync when they are off.

The 168 peanut bulb in the side marker lamp actually has two hot leads when the turns and parking lamps are powered so it shuts off.
When the turnsignal flasher is in the off part of its' cycle or just plain off there's a path to ground through the turnsignal filament so the side marker bulb lights.

Slick way to get a single filament bulb and two wires to do the job of a two filament bulb with three wires.

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

Ah, confirmed! thank you so much Hatzie. I recon Jay was right after all, it all depends on the condition, ha ha.

Re: Restoring Rusty
 

Whoa! don't you mean the 194?