NJTman

I'm looking around the sticky to find why my truck all of a sudden has a turn signal issue, where the lights in the info center for Brake and anti lock started occasionally lighting up while driving. For a short time, the lights came on, but went out relatively quickly. I noticed no change in the turn signals at all during this time.

Since the other day, the info lights came on and went off more regularly. I'm at a point where they're pretty much on most of the time, but occasionally go off. Weird thing is that when the lights in the info center are off, everything functions normally. When the lights come back on and stay on, neither turn signal indicator works.

I've found this thread about T/S and brake light switches having a problem together.
https://www.dieseltruckresource.com/...t=turn+signals

Unfortunately, it doesn't say how to go about fixing it.

Is the brake light switch (or the E Brake?) where I should look ? What do I look for? Unplug it and see what happens? What process of elimination is best to follow to figure out where the "short" or problem is? I'm kind of at a loss here, as I really don't know where to start first.

I appreciate any help you are willing to lend here, as I'm not proficient in electrical diagnosis.

Here are the lights which are on, when my turn signals don't work. They've never been on since I bought the truck earlier this month, other than when you initially start the truck.

Onemoparnut

Clean or replace the ground wire from the battery to the rad support that will cause a lot of problems.

NJTman

Thanks, Bill


You're talking about the short wire, off the negative bat cable, right ?

Did that the first day I bought the truck...as it was all funky looking.

dodgenstein

Check your fusible links. When they burn, the power starts backfeeding causing all sorts of dash lighting problems.

NJTman

Thanks.

Hopefully I can figure out where they are and which ones are bad.

Mark Nixon

Under the dash, to the right of the steering clumn there is a gold colored plate that the intrumentation and dash grounds bolt to.
Check and tighten the nut that holds these grounds to that plate.
Also make sure that the plate itself in tight to the dash support, as well.

Another ground issue is the one behind the head, on the firewall.

SOME of these trucks have a ground that runs from the lower bed corner to the lower cab corner, its hit and miss as to whether they are still there after 20-odd years.

I've never quite understood why Dodge has no direct HEAVY guage body-to-frame grounding.

Mark.

Mark Nixon

That's actually relatively easy.
Near the driver's hood hinge, on top of the inner fender, there is a cluster of "untaped" wires, with some of them running into a triangle-shaped black connector.
These are the fusible links.
To see if they are burned, tug at each wire individually, if it stretches, it's burned.
Sometimes you can SEE they are burned and broken without moving them.

Mark.

NJTman

Thanks Mark.

I'll look there tomorrow.


Today, I spent 6+ hours in 19 degree temps trying to locate this issue on the truck. Found a few different problems, but don't think I've isolated it yet.

In this pic you'll see the nice job someone in the past did with the fuse box. Apparently, the heater circuit and the b/u light circuit both went bad at some point. When I dropped the fuse box (chrysler sucks at where they decided to put fuse panels.... bunch of aholes for engineers, huh ?) and found this mess. The new fuse wire that was installed actually pulled itself apart as it was done with crimp on connectors.



so I fixed that...this time soldering the connections to make sure there was no re occurrence of the same issue. This did not fix the problem as I continued to search.... but my heater motor works great now !



I did find that the main supply for the 3 fuses on the left side, one of which is the antilock circuit, was corroded (Look in the 2nd pic, as you can see the green corrosion on that terminal below the blue wire at the bottom left). I took that apart and cleaned that thoroughly. That did not fix the problem either.

Fusable links are all still good, although they look like crap. Fusable links ? THey can't still be using them, are they ? Geesh!


I spent another few hours cleaning every type of connection under the hood I could find. I repaired both battery cable ends into the battery side, cleaned the heater grid solenoid connections (which were terrible), found a loose wire at the first relay towards the front of the engine bay of the 3 relays that control engine function (fuel cutout I believe) and zip tied a bunch of wires under the dash that were hanging down and flopping all over the place under the drivers side dash (mainly above the E brake bracket.

I do have another theory, though, although it's probably wrong.

I believe that the rear brakes are shot as well...considering the condition of the fronts that I just replaced

If there is air in the rear brake lines, will that cause the ABS light to intermittently come on ? Since I haven't had the opportunity to get to pull them apart to get the new rear w/cylinders, hardware, shoes etc, as of yet, my thoughts were that the ABS system may be sensing the air in the system. Is this possible ? Would this occur even though the truck is sitting idling in park, and the Brake / Abs lights are flashing on and off slowly ? Does this make sense ?

Also, if you move the fuse box around, could that cause the same lights on the dash to come on or go off ? Sometimes while I was working under there, it seemed as though the light would interact with the movement of the fuse panel. Tomorrow I'm going to look for that "Gold" that you were talking about, and see if the ground is loose.

Thanks again. Truly appreciated.

Mark Nixon

Every ABS light I have seen come on usually does so in a steady fashion, no blinking, no wavering, just plain solid.
Low brake pressure can trip the ABS valve in the back, which will cause the ABS light to come on.
SOMETIMES the light will come and go, but it's brake pressure related.

Your issue seems to be connectivity related, either a bad ground, or possibly even a faulty ABS box, or a troublesome vacuum fault switch located on the driver's fender.

I absolutely detest crimp connectors.
In my mind they are at BEST a mediocre temporary fix in a bad pinch alongside the road.
Soldering and shrink wrapping the repair is the best, most permanent, way to make a good repair, hands down.

As far as the "engineers" on the Fuse box, it's been said that the engineers only do what Chrysler will let them do, based on the allowed budget for R&D to do it, which is understandable.
I just wonder why they use that excuse for a situation where stupidity just plain overrode practical common sense?
WHY, why, WHY? attach a fuse receptacle to a piece of plastic in a place where it'll likely get kicked loose, hang down and likely get STEPPED ON?
Tecnically, it's a safety issue, because they hang right over the brake pedal
when they suddenly decide to "wander out for a look around".

They should'a kept it in the glovebox area like the pre-'81 trucks were!

Mark.

dodgenstein

ABS and brake light will also indicate a low vacuum situation. There is a sensor at the drivers side hood hinge. Possible bad sensor/ connection here or cracked hose from sensor to brake booster.

roccoboost

I would stick with the wiring. My truck does the exact same thing as yours (no turns, brake/abs light in dash and my tach isnt working now as well). My fuse box sort of hangs down and I noticed that when I bumped it with my foot that suddenly everything worked again. It did this for a while, but now none of it works at all. My truck has some "funny" wiring like yours, but I just haven't had the desire to deal with the cold in order to fix all of it yet.

NJTman

What ? You don't like frostbite, either ?


My nose and feet hurt the most. I'll wait till it's warmer to tackle this problem, but for now, I just have to get the brakes working again. Another day tomorrow in this cold

NJTman

Well,

I figured it out...

I brought my truck to a "auto electric repair shop". The guys there told me that it would be $85 per hour for an "undetermined number of hours or days" and that I would have to leave my truck there for at least a few days to get it even looked at.

I asked why and they said that they don't guarantee any time or limit of how long something takes to fix, and that if I dropped it off on a (pick a day) that even though I was "scheduled" that there would be no promise that they would even look at the truck at all. Something to the effect that "this isn't changing a water pump, you know, and it could take forever to trace the issue." So I left.

Determined to figure this one out, even after admitting on this forum that I really am not good @ electrical troubleshooting, but feeling so frustrated and angry that I could walk out with a $$$$ HUGE BILL $$$ for an actual or "invented" time of working on the truck, I gave it my all.

Since I noticed that the lights being on seemed to coincide with the fuse box being moved, I figured why not start there. Well, I"m lying down in the truck, with my knees in melting snow, when I moved the fuse panel in a certain direction the blinker came on (the switch was in the on position) and the lights went out. I continued moving the fuse box around for about an hour, continuing to make this happen.

As it started to get a little darker, due to the sun setting here, I caught a glimpse of a "spark" inside the back of the fuse panel. It was on the 3rd common power bar, on the 2nd fuse location up (AKA # 9) fuse which runs the turn signals, tach, and rwal module..... That's the lights / turn signal fuse which is the common factor of my problem to begin with... What a dummy, I should have looked there first.


I tried removing the draw wire for that circuit (which also has a tap wire that leads to the turn signal flasher) but it wouldn't come out.

So I went on line to find a product that would dissolve the oxidization in there and hopefully correct the problem... I found on Amazon something called "DEOXIT". Turns out RadioShack had it in stock, so I went there and bought the kit. Cost about $14 retail, but Amazon has it cheaper. I went back home.

I disconnected the battery, and pulled all the fuses. I sprayed this deoxit cleaner in each terminal, let it sit for a while, then sprayed another electrical contact cleaner as well. I then used their "gold" lubricant from the kit to lube the newly cleaned terminals. I also cleaned the feed bar wires & connections on the back of the fuse panel after disconnecting them as well.

I let the assembly dry, and put all the fuses back in in their respective locations.... cleaning each fuse tab with sandpaper to get a good contact, as they were also oxidized.

Wallah.... No more lights / lack of turn signals. I cleaned up my mess, and put the fuse panel back in the dash. I test drove the truck and I don't have the problem any longer.


Thank you to the guys who gave their suggestions, but most of all, thank you to "ROCCOBOOST" as your description of your truck mirrored mine and lead me to finding out what was wrong with the truck.


Here is a pic of the common power bar locaton and where I saw the arcing. I pulled all three of those lead wires and cleaned their contact points, as well.

Mark Nixon

I just gotta ask.
After all of this hair pulling, do you have ANY HAIR LEFT?

I'm of the opinion that having it hanging down and getting bumped with wet feet and just abused in general caused the issue.

Now, this is nothing bad towards you, but they really do need to be located up out of the way so they DON'T get wet or kicked around.

It's nice to hear you got it sorted out.

Mark.

roccoboost

Thanks for the good word NJT. Your persistence is going to help me out. Now I know where to start when I finally man up and fix mine.

Mark, my fuse box only fell down recently and I dont drive my truck as frequently as most on these boards. I am not sure that the corrosion is just due to the hanging box. The box hanging down is not the best thing obviously, but we all know that the electrical on these trucks isnt great.