Readers, it must be accepted that a 63 year old car has a greater chance of breaking down than a modern car – not only because of age, but also because modern cars are so much more reliable than those of yore. Since 1991, cars have been required to have emergency flasher or hazard lights. Those old enough to remember will no doubt recall those heady days when hazard lights were a novelty and conferred a great number of benefits, from double-parking to the temporary suspension of many road rules.

With safety in mind, I have, I confess, previously fitted rear seat belts to my Morris 850, and fuel pump safety relay, and now – hazard lights. Of course I searched around the internet and discovered a small number of options, mainly from UK, and they did indeed look the job, but I was hoping to find something local.

I did find a switch on a Morris Minor parts web site, but rather expensive at about $80. Oh well, I thought, probably about the same as a UK import by the time shipping is added, so I purchased it.

Initially I was very happy. It looked exactly what I needed. But, it was just a switch, and a one page instruction sheet. The instructions were dreadful. It became obvious that there were two choices here. If the existing flasher relay was used, then one had to accept that the indicator lights would be functional if the ignition was off (assuming that one wanted hazard lights to be available with the ignition off), or, if a separate flasher was used, then there would be situation where both the vehicle indicator flasher and the hazard light flasher would be trying to flash the same lights at the same time. Obviously they would not be in phase, and there would be quite an interesting display that would cause total confusion to other road users.

Upon realising this, I made an enquiry of the seller expressing my disappointment at the lack of development of this “clever little switch”, and received quite a defensive phone call from the Australian seller in which the supplier (apparently based in UK) was to blame. To be fair, I was offered a refund. I also pointed out that the exact same item was available on Amazon for $40, and elsewhere from Spain (where the switch was made) for as low as $20. Quite a markup for a one-page half-baked instruction sheet.

Upon thinking that night, I decided to persevere and make up my own circuit, using this switch, so that the indicator lights remained operative only with the ignition on, and the hazard lights available with ignition on or off, and using the vehicle’s flasher relay only. I also wanted original looking wiring with proper colours, and to have it fit without cutting or splicing any of the original loom.

It took about a day, but I got something going and it worked very well. The next question was “where to mount it”. The actual switch knob looks period for the car, and the two obvious choices were on a separate bracket under the parcel shelf (much like how the washer pump is mounted), or in the spare heater hole in the switch panel. I tried both, and the results are shown below. I settled for the switch panel since it seemed to be less obtrusive there and the chances of my fitting a heater are remote.

So, I can now motor along knowing that I can have all those benefits that other more modern cars have and in the event of a problem, I will not be such a danger to other road uses who do doubt will kindly move out of the way while I drift to the side of the road in flashing glory.

Tony Cripps

Tony, that looks remarkably like the switch on my 1982 Range Rover that I am restoring.


This is a great safety feature.
Have you also installed a High Level brake light.

Phil

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Find a job you love and you will never have to go to work !

Nice work Tony.

I've often thought about developing a hazard switch using a couple of diodes connected to the existing flasher. I quite like the idea of mounting the switch where the ash tray is on dash.

thanks for your comments and pictures. The Range Rover switch is something that looks like what I saw available from UK. The one from Spain has no knurl around the edge. Although diode isolation of the lights is possible, there remains the issue of the possibility of having two flashers relays active at the same time, or having the indicator lights active with the ignition off. The RR switch, and the Lucas switch from UK, have quite a complicated terminal arrangement, and even then, a separate hazard relay is required. With the switch from Spain, it has three terminals which all connect together when activated and this performs a similar function to having diodes in the L and R indicatorlines - but you still need a relay to deactivate the indicator function when the ignition is off. The Australian seller suggested that "after all, it is an add-on" with the implication that it wasn't a perfect solution. And it wasn't, but for $80 I was expecting more I suppose.

A high mounted brake light is certainly a good idea, but I suppose it would have to be at roof level rather than boot lid level.

I have gone as far as having a driver's side exterior mirror (clamped to the window frame - heaven forbid that I drill a hole or two in the door).

Readers, I am in two minds about this. I remade the under-dash parcel shelf bracket to make it look less boxy and more in keeping with other brackets I have there (bonnet catch and washer), and now I am not sure which position I should use. Parcel shelf or switch panel. Of course I'd rather not have the switch there are all, but in this day and age, I think it is worth having. I'll see how the new parcel shelf installation looks in a couple of days and see how it goes.

Would you mind sharing more details of where you purchased from etc? I'm keen to fit a hazard light to the van for similar reasons but don't know where to start.

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67 Van, 1275cc

Please stand by on this. I am trying to source the switch at a much cheaper price than advertised elsewhere.

Great, thanks!

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67 Van, 1275cc

As regular readers will know, I am not one to stand by and accept sub-standard goods and services sold to the Mini community and in this case, I had an interesting issue with that well known firm, Tridon. While I am extremely pleased with my hazard warning light system, there is a slight problem in that the old-style thermal flasher unit slows down considerably when called upon to flash four lights at once instead of two. So I thought I would fit a more modern unit which has a flash rate independent of the load - an electro-mechanical unit instead of a thermal bi-metallic strip.

Now, such a thing should be easy to come by you would think, but not so - since I wanted a positive earth device. Imagine my delight when I came across the HD13 unit from Tridon. A screen shot from their catalogue is shown below. A Google search shows that many web sites, including Tridon's, state that this unit is not polarity senstive and will work on both positive and negative ground systems.

Coming back from Supercheap, I was somewhat alarmed to find that, upon opening the blister pack, that one of the three terminals was marked +. Of course, the three pin plug in the car's wiring loom cannot be turned around, but being convinced by the catalogue that it would work, I just plugged it in and with some sense of anticipation, pulled out my hazard switch only to find that nothing at all happened. No lights, no flash, no nothing.

I rigged the thing up with a bench power supply and with a lamp and it did work when connected + to the + terminal marked, but did not work when connected the other way as if it was on the car. Obviously, this is not made for positive earth operation despite what the catalogue says.

Being somewhat peeved about paying $20 for it, I wrote to Tridon to ask them to "Please explain".

A day later I got a response from a nice fellow Michael who advised that none of their flasher units suited positive earth vehicles and that he couldn't understand why I would think any of them would. I sent him the catalogue I downloaded (from their web site), whereupon he said that that catalogue was printed in 2005 and out of date, and that I should check their web site for the latest information. I pointed out that the metatdata in the PDF file showed that it was last modified (by Tridon) in 2022 and that it was freely downloadable by anyone today thus indicating to the consumer that it was current.

Michael finally caved in and apologised, but not before saying that I had somehow "managed" to download a "cached" version of the file and he would find it on their system and remove it.

So, there you go. If you search "tridon HD13 positive earth" you will get many hits all stating that the unit suits positive earth vehicles, the top of the list being a link to the Tridon catalogue on their own web site. So folks, as per Michael's information, there are no Tridon flasher units available for positive earth vehicles.

However, since I have gone to the trouble of getting this flasher thing going (and I've ordered a couple of more pull-out switches from Europe to see if they actually come) it is now an easy matter to design a positive earth electromechanical unit like Tridon's which work both positive and negative earth - I am surprised they haven't thought to do it. I will report back with how it goes.

Regards
Tony

PS: I got my $20 refunded