Ford Taurus Turn Signals Don't Work.
by Liv | Published on March 8th, 2009, 4:06 pm | Sports
My grandfather whom passed away a few years ago is someone I admired dearly and oddly enough use to call WD-40 "skunk-piss" as long as I can remember. If there was a problem, WD-40 was the answer. To find one of the family's homes without a can of WD-40 would be rare. It's in the family genetic code. The man was a walking billboard for the stuff and literally kept a travel size bottle in the trunk of his car for those emergency situations.... so I suppose it's no surprise that "his" car, the one I was given after Grandma passed away would be fixed with something as simple as a few squirts of WD-40.
You see it all started last week. The car had successfully driven from Toledo to NC, and we've been slowly swapping our driving between my 95 Green Taurus and Grandma's 93 Gold Taurus.... Building trust. Then a few days ago we hear this weird noise on the way into the dentist. We pull over and it's the heat shielding off the catalytic converter. No biggie... I'm familiar with colder climates and there capability for rusting exhaust parts into oblivion.... So we get back in and keep driving.... it's from that point on we realize the turn signals aren't working.
So I spent several days trying to figure it out with no luck. Went through all the fuses both under the hood and in the fuse box but everything was fine. I really hadn't ever experienced something like this... because generally when a bulb goes the others still work just quicker.... and I mean what engineer would design a car's electrical system to fail completely if 1 bulb goes.... I knew it wasn't the blinker.... those usually get slower before they go.... so I was leaning towards a relay, when I stumbled upon some random thread of Ford owners with suspiciously similar failed turn signals.
Someone mentioned squirting wd-40 down into the emergency flasher switch and cycling the emergency flasher switch several times... said it works like a charm...
Then multiple, and previously frustrated Ford owners began running out to there car and trying it: "Success."
Now I'm not a fan of squirting anything liquid in nowhere electrical... but short on electrical cleaner... I said what the heck, and guess what?
It worked....
...as did my turn signals... they magically started blinking... and the Taurus which I'll be lending to mom and dad this week won't require the use of hand signals to drive.... More to the point, I get my leather seats back in the 95 from Shannon....
So if you happen to stumble upon this page and find your turn signals not working in your ford vehicle... break out my grandfather's favorite product "Skunk piss" and spray in in your emergency blinker button!
See it all makes sense now... when we pulled over to check the rattle, I engaged the 4-way emergency button...since it isn't used all that often it got stuck internally, one of the connections stuck, and voila... instant flasher failure....
