I had some work done on the car and when it came back the turn signal lights inside stay on. The lights still blink, the brake lights still work, but the lights should not be on inside. The work was done in the trunk, and i have been checking the signal lights installation. Any ideas?
alot of electrical problems stem from poor grounds! Especially the socket grounds in the trunk.The sockets ground to the housings in the trunk,check there first.Some people have went as far as adding additional grounds to the sockets,aslo check that you have the proper bulbs.
X2 on what Harry said above. Grounds are responsible for most of the electrical troubles on these cars. Make sure the pot metal tail light housings have a good ground. Use a jumper wire if your not sure.
Also, a local FGF'er went through a whole bunch of trouble shooting when his signal & tail lights were doing crazy things. Someone suggested changing the tail light bulbs out one at a time. Sure enough one of the brand new bulbs had an internal short.
Since your problem started after the work in the trunk I would try removing the tail light bulbs one by one and see if you can at least rule out what does / doesn't help.
Maybe I'm interpreting this quote differently than the rest of responders so far.
When you make above statement, are you talking about the green turn signal indicator on your instrument cluster in the dash?
If those are the lights that are staying on, and you also say all your turn signals and brake lights are still working properly,then I'd be looking at the ground for the cluster up under the dash, and not so much in the trunk...regardless of this being the area that was recently worked on.
If all your signals/brakes/taillights are working properly at the back of the car, then I believe you don't have any wiring or ground problems back there...
Thank you guys I will start with the tail lights as it's more accessible, and work my way to the dash. I have a replacement dash bezel to install soon so that will give me more access. I had toyed with the lights and even tried silicone on the outside to hold them in position, but I hadnt tried the bulbs, or seriously played with the grounds. Thanks again.
Ok there is a slight catch. I took all the bulbs out of the rear of the car, checked the grounds, checked the bulbs and all appeared ok, but i did adjust the metal ground on every bulb just in case. The turnsignal light stayed on inside the car, although all signals continued to work. It blinked inside on the dash, but the light not signalling remained on. As I was about shut off the car I noticed the windshield wipers were switched on by not working. I guess the repair guys had touched it, but that was fine. When I switched the wipers to off, the turnsignal lights on the dash dimmed and then both blinked like an emergancy light? Tomorrow i will look at the windshield wiper motor.
Just about every single circuit on this car is chassis grounded...there are very few dedicated ground wires.
This means you need to make sure the dash is grounded to the unibody is grounded to the subframe is grounded to the engine . And the radiator support must also be grounded to the subframe. And then you need a big, fat, nasty ground cable going back to the battery. There simply MUST be electrical continuity between ALL of these major parts of the car. Only THEN can you ground every circuit to any of these major metal items and expect it to work properly.
When ONE of these grounds is poor, things start going haywire. Lights that are supposed to be on, glow dim. Lights that are supposed to be off, glow randomly. Starters crank slowly when engine is hot, and some things simply stop working. I betcha dollars to donuts you have a ground somewhere that is missing/corroded/painted/disconnected/undersized. And the bad ground may or may not be near your dash cluster or wiper switch/motor ground. But it very well might...and I'd still recommend you look there first.
With these cars, we need to recognize that the painted dash is bolted to the painted unibody (poor ground), and the subframe is connected to the unibody with rubber mounts (poor/no ground), and the radiator support is connected to the subframe with rubber mounts (poor/no ground), and the engine is connected to the subframe with rubber mounts (poor/no ground). And your battery is grounded usually only to the engine itself (good ground...yay!...assuming it's clean/corrosion and PAINT free/heavy gauge).
Because of the above vehicle construction methods; copper straps, wires, and cables MUST connect all of these components to complete circuits back to the battery...the painted surfaces and rubber connection points just can't effectively carry electricity...and when that electricity can't find an easy/unintertupted path back to the battery, it finds alternate paths, like maybe right thru light bulbs that are supposed to be OFF, causing them to glow at varying brightnesses, etc.
You need to identify all of these major grounds and inspect them. And if you can't find one of the above mentioned ground paths, just easily create one, by adding a ground strap or cable somewhere hidden...a nice copper connection point, heavy gauge, to metal ground bare and shiny.
There is no more poorly grounded car than a just-completed rotisserie restoration where someone has spent ridiculous time and effort to paint and coat EVERY SINGLE SURFACE of the car and engine, but then neglected to grind that pretty paint completely OFF of the connection points for every single ground. As painful as that sounds to some to grind 50 to 100 locations of paint OFF of a freshly painted car during reassembly, it absolutely must be carefully done at every single electrical path, or things won't work right.
There is no such thing as too many ground paths on these cars. And it is often the prettiest and most over-restored cars that have the fewest/worst ground paths.
