Ditch the rest of the LEDs and I bet the blinkers will work fine at all times.

I love LEDs for many applications but old cars are not one of them! Both circuits and fixtures in automobiles MUST be designed to use LEDs for them to work properly, not stress the eyes of both the occupants and other drivers and be legal. I've done a lot of driving outside the USA and while I avoid it at night when I must it makes me greatly appreciate the US DOT regulations for exterior lighting!

 

Thanks for the advice. I have replaced all of the lights (except the reverse lights) with incandescent bulbs and everything lights up nicely when I turn the 'parking lights' on (one notch pull on the switch) and stay on when the headlights are turned on. I plugged in one headlight and it works, and the brake lights work. The turn signals still do not work, nor do the hazards. When I turn on the hazards nothing blinks but the hazard indicator light comes on. I bought the car as a pile of parts and am just now putting the dash in so perhaps there is something else I need to install? I have the column in partially and the speedo/tach section, but do not have the center gage cluster installed. I added an additional ground wire from the frame to the birdcage by the driver-side door pillar and confirmed that the spedo/tach guage cluster is well grounded. I have the original old style flasher and a new electronic one, I have put them both in the fuse block and neither works. The dash lights also do not work, could the headlight switch be bad? Or not correctly grounded? I plan on getting a new one since the resistor for the dash lights seems to be fairly fubar. Should I replace the headlight switch and see if that fixes things or are there other things I should be looking at?

Thanks for the advice so far and any further advice is appreciated.

Scott

 

headlights work. the turn signals do not. i would look at the turn signal and brake light circuits and switch.

 

There is another flasher under the dash on the passenger side. It's just plugged into a wiring harness. I believe that flasher is the one for the turn signals and the one in the fuse block is for the hazard lights.

DC

 

Measure resistance under load with a digital volt meter. Clamp the positive probe to your battery positive and probe the load side at the lamp. Compare that to the battery voltage, and the difference is the voltage drop.

 

Thanks! Do you know the color for the leads on that one? I have a connector for a flasher but I think it is for the security system, it has pink and orange leads.

Scott

 

Bear in mind this is what my dash looks like.





we are getting closer. I put my fancy new electronic flasher in the fuse block and now the hazards are working correctly. I am going to get another new flasher and see if putting that in the wire harness with the pink and purple leads does the trick. I also realized that the flasher associated with the security system is behind the passenger seat.

Scott

 

Success! I had to temporarily cannibalize my '75 and '69 to get a known good set of flashers, but now the hazards and turn signals all work correctly! The lesson here?: don't screw around with LED bulbs and just put it together as God intended!

 

[QUOTE=ScottEwine;1601871021]Bear in mind this is what my dash looks like.





/QUOTE]
Keep the shifter. I love it.

 

FYI, I think the another key to this is I had all the pedals stripped down as part of the conversion to a hydraulic clutch and had the brake shift removed, which basically meant the brakes were always on. I taped down that button so the brakes were essentially off and then things all started working better.

Scott

 

Great to know that things are mainly working!

Still problems with the dash lights? Know that the IP (instrument panel) fuse is fed by the headlamp switch using the PARK/HAZARD fuse and circuit. Thus if the parking lights come on, that part of the switch is fine. With the headlamp switch at "PARKING" or "ON" power is applied to one side of the dimmer rheostat inside the switch. Look for it. You should get +12V on one side and varying voltage on the other as you turn the ****. If not there's a problem inside the switch.

After the rheostat the power goes to the IP fuse (a green wire in '79 but not sure about your year). A grey wire coming out the other side of the fuse feeds all the instrument lamps. So obvious the voltage should vary with the position of the dimmer at both sides of the IP fuse. The reason for this arrangement is to prevent a short or excessive load in the dash lighting circuit from burning out the rheostat. The surest way to burn out that rheostat is to replace the IP fuse with a higher amperage in attempt to "fix" a problem that causes the fuse to blow.

 

the dash lights all seem to be working!

 

brake lights run thru the turn signal switch. so if brake lights on all the time, you did something to shut em off.

 

The above is correct. You need to verify that the turn signals still work with the brake light switch button released as the turn signal switch overrides the brake lamp on the applied side. Brake and turn share the same filament in the rear; park uses the other filament.

 

Thanks for the guidance, I just checked it out and it works correctly with the brakes on and with the brakes off so everything is looking very good at this point.

Scott

 

Yours is yet another excellent example of why LEDs don't belong in any but the simplest circuits of a C3!

By "simple" I mean:

1) Dome/footwell lamps.
2) Storage compartment/glove box/under hood/spare tire access lamps.
3) Backup lamps.
4) Warning/indicator lamps with the VERY notable exception of the "GEN" warning! You MUST use an LED of the same color as the lens!