[s-cars] Damn electrics

[Igor Kessel]

Joseph Pizzimenti wrote:
>
> Okay, here goes:
> I go to make a left turn the other day and my turn
> signal starts to flash repeatedly like the bulb's out.
>  So I get out and check and everything's blinking
> fine, albeit a bit fast.  So I swap out the bulbs with
> some cheapie auto parts store bulbs and it's still
> blinking fast.  So I decide to swap it out with the
> right side bulbs and now at least they match.  I now
> have both sides strobing like crazy and was wondering
> if there's something I'm overlooking here?

Joseph,
if ALL of your blinker bulbs light up yet they are strobing I can't help
but think of the blinker control module going bad.
In our cars it is all-electronic, and looks like a regular relay.
However inside it has a PC board with a rather trivial transistor
multivibrator. I hacked into mine a few years ago, coz it had been
flashing too slowly to my taste if compared with my wife's A4. Since I
can't leave a good thing alone, I had to open it. Inside of the blinker
control module there is an R-C timing circuit, which controls the time
constant "t" (damn, where's the Greek Tau symbol when you need it?). I
replaced the resistor R with a lower value so now my car blinks about
20% faster.
I would venture a guess that the electrolytic capacitor C in your
control module has dried out and needs to be replaced.

--
Igor Kessel
two turbo quattros