Weird Problem, Happened tonight, never seen it before Options

[KaptKaos]

So I am driving home tonight from work. Its dark and I have the lights on. I pull out of the parking garage to the intersection that leads to the on-ramp. In LA traffic, that takes 5 minutes.

Anyway, I am sitting at the intersection, waiting to make a left with my left turn directional on and I notice that on the dash, both direction lights are blinking.

My cold start valve is disconnected and it runs a little rough when cold, so I turned off the directional and rev'd the engine a bit. Click the directional on, no more problem. Hmmmm...

Ok, so I drive the 16 miles, in 45 minutes to get home. The last leg of the trip is about 5 miles and i can go 90 there if I wanted.

I pull off the freeway onto the ramp which leads to a stop light. Left turn again and I notice it happened again!! Same drill, turn off, rev a bit back on, only the left is blinking now.

These seems like an early wanring of something more dire. Since I don't drive much at night, I haven't used the headlights in a while. Not sure if this, plus stereo (nothing fancy, no mega amps or anything) plus the directional is casuing a drain somewhere.

Any and all advice to check this is appreciated.

Thanks,
Joe

[drew365]

I don't have an answer but mine does the same thing with both right and left. When I turn on a blinker, the first blink is just the one light than both arrows start blinking. Outside, all blinkers are working correctly. Mine doesn't stop if I rev the engine. I think it's a pretty common problem. I'd like to fix it but it doesn't seem to be hurting anything. Been like that for at least 6 months or more.

[SirAndy]

it's a ground problem. i went through the whole electrical nightmare when replacing my main harness.
the turn signal indicators are also fed by the emergency flasher relay. the way the ground is routed is pretty weird, there's also a diode in the circuit.
what i did (and it works great) is to move both wires for each indicator (one from the blinker, one from the emergency flasher) onto one lead of the bulb, then add a ground wire to the second lead that goes to the main ground in the gauge cluster.

now, both indicators light up individuallay, like supposed to be and both when using the emergency flasher.

i suspect that the diode in the circuit went faulty and that's why you get both to "ground out" at the same time (through the emergency flasher relay, accidentally and NOT good btw.) ...

anyhow, if you add a explicit ground wire to each of the bulbs, you bypass the diode (without adding a problem to the wiring) and now it works just fine.

puh, kinda long post, hope this all makes sense (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)
Andy