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gauges flicker with turning signal....

D

D2 Cat

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south of Kansas City
I notice the needle movement on the volt meter, when the turn signal is on the meter dips. Is this a typical symptom of mid 90's vehicles or is it caused by bad grounds?
 
Also check the positive post of the passenger side battery hasn't worked loose. And or might want to take it apart and clean it too there is a lead spacer betweeen the cross over lead and other battery lead. It will make your voltage gauge read low too and be more sensitive to voltage dips.

Mine dips pretty good when glows cycle but after start charge recovery it stays up near 14 volts pretty good. I have noticed turn blinker makes it flicker but not sure when or if it worse sometimes or not. I'll watch it more closely.
 
Owning this truck is like having a child. Something different every day!

On a different post I mentioned my fuel gauge problem is solved. FSU & gauge both bad. So now I'm working on this wrinkle.

I'm thinking maybe clean the grounds (to be sure) on the pass. side near firewall on intake.

schiker, this spacer---where is it? I recently installed new batteries and all terminals are clean. Hey, there are too many words in that sentence spelled L-E-A-D.:smile5:
 
Yeah, my gauges aren't reading too accurately - the temp gauge is high and the battery gauge is low. I also have the flickering needle thing going. My battery connections and connectors are clean and tight, but I think I'll recheck the grounds. Cleaned 'em real well just over a year ago, but it couldn't hurt to look at them again. Be kinda nice if it was a cheap fix!
 
On my old 89 the gauges are all over the place,batt gauge reads 8,speedo shows only 1/2 the actual speed as does the bean counter,oil press pegs out to the max.Temp and fuel are OK.
Was like that from day one,i never been able to fix it.
 
You are watching the voltage drop with the turn signals.

Another way to attempt to fix it in addition to above suggestions is a 'big three' type wiring addition. This is add a frame ground to engine, positive wire off battery to alternator charging post, and wire to fender from battery ground. These are thick battery cable type wires.
 
The positive connection on passenger side is notorious for loosening up. If you take off the top wire and peel back the red rubber the spacer sits between the cables iirc. Might be on top of the bottom wire ??? You'll have to look for it otherwise you think its part of the cable and one piece terminal end. It can get corroded on the underneath side and appears clean but the crossover might not be making good connection. When this isn't a good connection the voltage reads a bit low and magnifies the blinker drop, turn on headlights, or glows drops etc.

With batteries good and clean and tight the blinker will just ever so slightly flicker the needle. I watched mine real close and it does move maybe 1/3 of a needle width +/- which is normal I believe. More points to bad connection, ground, guage etc.

Another check is turn on headlights it should drop a little then as alternator kicks up it should recover some. If it doesn't points to this passenger side positive connection.
 
Thanx, gents. Don't have this problem on this rig, but my '67 had it, and I replaced the alternator, fixed. It wasn't producing enough juice at idle. Still have the prob. on the '70...one day I'll fix that one too.
 
Mine just about stopped fluctuating when I added redundant engine/cab and engine/frame ground wires. At the same Time I added a Neg to Frame on each battery. (I used the bolt that holds the front brake flex line on basically directly under the battery in the wheelwell).
 
Matt Bachand said:
Mine just about stopped fluctuating when I added redundant engine/cab and engine/frame ground wires. At the same Time I added a Neg to Frame on each battery. (I used the bolt that holds the front brake flex line on basically directly under the battery in the wheelwell).
Click to expand...
Sounds like you've done War Wagon's 'Big 3' times 2. You've run a ground from each battery to the frame. Kinda redundant, but I like it. I'm gonna be doing a lot of preventive maintenance next weekend. Think I'll add this to the list.
 
The small fender grounds esp on the passenger side tend to corrode and continue up the wire from being too close to the battery acid container. (Leaky battery...)

Same creep happens on the main positive battery junction taken off the positive post to the fuse box or power bus bar. Not the big cable to the starter but the smaller cable. Your year may come off the starter. Anyway the alternator to battery connection eliminates this old wire in unknown condition - Fuseable link or 200 amp fuse at your choice.

Another way to track down the connection is use a volt meter. Run this from the frame to the engine or frame to neg battery post. (Alt charge terminal to positive battery post engine running.) A voltage reading will be present but look for the larger ones. Panic at 0.3-0.5v for grounds.

The new GM trailblazer I have had 0.5 volts from the frame to the engine. The ground strap is gone and replaced with a smaller wire to the fender from the negative post thanks to GM bean counters. YUCK!

Think of how small the ground strap is on our truck and what electricity does to differential bearings arcing across them.
 
Do you have trailer wiring harness? If so and it makes 3 to 2, so the trailer brake lights flash as turn signals it could cause issues to parking/internal lights.

Unless one of your turn signals has a short to ground, there is no way the light itself pulls enough juice to pull the batteries down.
 
Dave Barbieri said:
Sounds like you've done War Wagon's 'Big 3' times 2. You've run a ground from each battery to the frame. Kinda redundant, but I like it. I'm gonna be doing a lot of preventive maintenance next weekend. Think I'll add this to the list.
Click to expand...

I replaced the OEM style ground straps once already, and they rotted off within 2 NE winters. Being so close to the downpipe wasn't helping anything, so I went block to frame by the brake line front wheelwell bolt. Then got carried away with redundancy. Havn't had a stall/hiccup since though.

BEfore winter I'm going to get a 0/0 gauge battery xover cable made up to go from batt pos to batt pos.

If anyone has this done can they post the length of the wire needed? Don't want it too long... or too short for that matter :) Its around 5 feet I think will route nice and neat. I'm thinking this should help disperse the nasty nasty nasty load the plow motor puts on the system.

FWIW my AZ GOLD alternator made it through the plowing season no problem. Lifetime warranty even if there is one, and I had my old one rebuilt incase it fails when AZ is closed. With 2 good batts you have at least an hour of driving to get yourself home with a failed alt (of course not a siezed alt)
 
The headlamp switch was a very common problem. They would heat up a lot. If yours gets warm on the outside after being on then I'd replace it with a new ACDelco, as the new ones are more robust to solve the issue. Mine would cause random no dash lights or no tail lights. Only swapped switch and it no longer gets hot and solved the problem.

Otherwise if you have some kind of aftermarket 3 to 2 converter for trailer lights cut it out and see if problem goes away.
 
buddy said:
The headlamp switch was a very common problem. They would heat up a lot. If yours gets warm on the outside after being on then I'd replace it with a new ACDelco, as the new ones are more robust to solve the issue. Mine would cause random no dash lights or no tail lights. Only swapped switch and it no longer gets hot and solved the problem.

Otherwise if you have some kind of aftermarket 3 to 2 converter for trailer lights cut it out and see if problem goes away.
Click to expand...

:iagree:
I've seen the headlight sw. cause smoked plastic, and the trailer 3-2 is notorious for fried wires. We ran a fleet of 60+ pickups w/ trailers, saw lots of these.
 
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