carter wrote:
what ya mean built in only so much smoke?
Guys maybe enough with the "smoke will come out" joke already? Its been done multiple times on this forum, other forums, had a whole ebay listing and one user (who also sells alternator conversions) uses this supposed joke in almoust every single one of his postings. Here its just confusing the bloke who asked the question.
<carter> you cant keep connecting a part which creates a permanent short and starts smoking (and so obviously burning your wiring in the process) to your wiring loom. If you wanna test the canister, test it on a bench separate of the loom as described (it really is straightforward). To keep testing it on your loom will result in wiring melting and creating more shorts and possibly a fire.
If connecting the canister results in smoke your problem most likely is in the leads to the cannister and not the canister itself. The canister is essentialy just a bimetalic switch which when receiving +12v starts turning on and off rapidly and hence transmiting a "blinking" +12v charge to your indicators. Its permanently +12v connected from the fusebox and the indicator lights are permanently grounded. When you engage the indicator stalk either left or right it connects the indicators on the corresponding side with the blinker canister thus grounding it, the switch inside the canister starts flicking on and off rapidly = blinking. When its broken it just stops blinking - it doesnt create a short as there is no direct ground feed to it. (unless the +12 connectors inside are touching on the metal body of the canister which is touching on the structure of the car - to test see if connecting +12v to one of the pins produces +12v on the body of the canister).
What you most likely have is a problem with connections either end. You either have the blinker lights connected to +12v or the canister earthed instead of being ed +12v from the fuse box. Just see that one of the wires to the canister is a switched +12v (switching the ignition switch on produces +12v from the wire) and that the other wire is neither +12v nor earthed when the indicator switch is in the middle and becomes earthed when the indicator switch is flicked left or right).
Oh and a 3rd wire splits from the +12v lead to the canister in some loom to feed either the heater fan on the wipers or other auxilaries - but its crimped to the +12v terminal at all times so if the short is on that side it'll smoke all the time not just when connected to the canister. So the problem is prob. not there.
