Turn signals? Who needs turn signals??

[jstein]

Hello community.

In a complete fit of amazing thoughtfullness, my wife bought me a 1979 911SC. I'm in heaven. First Porsche in the family, and what a way to start!

~ But.... ~

I've been chasing down a turn signal problem which has me stumped...

After replacing the flasher 'relay', here are the highlights:

Outside:
* Front lamps working properly
* Rear lamps not working (kinda - see below)

Inside:
* Left indicator flashes properly when left turn-signal is selected
* BOTH indicators flash when right turn signal is selected

Other items of note:
* When brakes are pressed - rear brake lights illuminate (when ignition is on) - and right brake light will blink when right turn signal is selected inside. Still no left rear flasher.
* Fronts work fine with hazards - none on rear.

I'm suspected now either:
* Loose/faulty ground(s) --- Ugggg
* Turn signal switch fault

Any other ideas?

[Dan Owens]

Burned out bulb/corroded bulb socket/ Bad socket wiring. Generally when the switch goes you have problems with the headlights going to high beam or on continously. That's not always the case but often.

[Hugh R]

Buy the book 101 Project for your Porsche from Pelican and follow the instructions on removing the turn signal switch and spray electrical contact cleaner on it and make sure all the contacts are clean and corrosion free. Welcome to the board. There are several plugs where the wiring goes through the body, under the dash, and in the rear truck, try pulling those off and check for corrosion.

[vash]

nice wife! no, great wife!

[Peterfrans]

Bad grounding?

[jstein]

I checked the continuity of the rear turn signal bulbs and things look fine - next I'll try cleaning and polishing contacts.

I'm looking at the schematic in the Bentley manual (p970-17) - and have a couple of questions:

1) It looks like the rear signals are not fused - whereas the front ones are. Am I reading this correctly? If so, why would this be?

2) There are wires marked "NCA" - can someone enlighten me as to the meaning of that mnemonic?

[fintstone]

Your symptoms would eliminate the flasher and switch/stalk. It has to be a problem between your rear bulbs and where they tie into the front signals wiring. Check your connections at the fuse block. Looks to me like your rear signals are connected at the input side of the fuses for the front signals. Make sure you have the correct bulbs.

[dillinger]

Check the wiring. If it is the same as the front, you will have two positive wires going to the bulb connectors and a ground going to the casing. If you have any wires hanging in there, that might be the problem.

If I remember correctly, they don't give you much wire to play with to get your fingers in there and make all the connections.

Don

[jstein]

It turns out that the spring contact in the rear-right socket was not making good contact with the center of the bulb - I bent that out a bit and cleaned it up - everything works fine now!

Many thanks for all the help - I'm sure I'll have more questions soon.



p.s. I'm going by the assumption that the wire designator "NCA" stands for "No Consistent Answer" :P

[fintstone]

probably "no color assigned"