I have a 1988 Toyota Truck where the left blinker blinks very fast when I put on my left turn signal. The right blinker blinks at normal speed. I tried replacing the left turn signal blinker light bulb but it does the same thing where it blinks fast. Please advise how I can fix this problem?
You can have a bulb burnt out or a bad contact in bulb socket. If both bulbs burn then you need to remove bulb, clean contacts with a light emery, lube with dielectric and reinstall. I think the rears give more problems than the front. You can do a search of this ng and find quite a few answers to this problem if you need. HTH, davidj92
Can happen if a bulb looses a ground connection and instead finds ground through the other filament in the bulb. I've seen an internal contact in a socket corrode and go intermittent and do this.
If the flasher is bad then when he does a right signal it should also flash at an accelerated rate. A turn signal works as a charging capacitor through a resistor or an inductor through a resistor. I forgot which but it is a known thing in electrical engineering beggining courses, they call it a RC time constant (resistance, capacitance) or LR (inductance, resistance) time constant. In other words the blinking rate is dependant on capacitance in flasher connected to resistance of two bulbs (front and rear) on one side of car (either right or left). One way to show this is to pull out front or rear bulb and blinker rate will change and get faster just like a burned out bulb which has the same infinite resistance. So obviously even though he changed bulb there is still a high resistance in circuit somewhere.
Long ago, when I worked at a gas station. I never met a fast blinking signal light that wasn't remedied by a new flasher. That includes situations where only one of the signals was faster than the other.
The speed of the flash is related to the load on it. It is just a bi-metal strip with the load current used to heat it and it opens when hot. A fast flash means the load is not large enough to really heat it up so it will not stay open circuited the usual time when hot and it cools down too quickly producing a fast flash. The 'normal' flash speed [ same light time on as off ] in any flasher is set for a standard set of bulbs used in most vehicles using that particular flasher part number. Often when people add a trailer they try to use the original flasher but are adding two more brake lights to over-load the circuit and the flash rate will go bananas or hardly work at all. You can purchase an auxilary flash unit from Toyota to take care of this problem, esp on 4runners. The flashing lights are located in front and rear and sometimes on the sides of the vehicle, so all bulbs must be working, a burnt bulb at the front will 'flash' differently than a burnt bulb in the rear, as the rear bulb is actually the higher-powered brake light and draws much more current than the front bulb. Also dual-element bulbs often short internally and the current cross-feeds into both the 'flash' and 'parking' or running bulb circuit. You need to check every bulb, front and rear. To avoid spending money on test bulbs, you can waste some time by swapping the left-right front bulbs, then the L-R rear bulbs and when the flash rate moves to the other side of the vehicle, you found the baddie. If this fails, look for a corroded socket or a broken wire.. Winter ice build up on unsecured wires will break them while bumping down the road..
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I had this problem on a customers truck once, it turned out to be the trailer light adapter "box" that was added for towing his boat. The box converts 5 wire (seperate stop/turn lights) to four wire. See if you have one.
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