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| The Alfatross' unrestored trafficator box before cleaning. |
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| Inside the box: two solenoid relays and an adjustable flash interval timer whachamacallit. The "marshmallow" on the right is the modern equivalent. |
I talked about The Alfatross' trafficator a year or two ago in the context of how I was going to try to get it working again. We lost points in the 2016 Arizona Concours d'Elegance because we still had not solved that problem. This post is about the monumental--nay, heroic!--effort that went into getting the damn thing working in the two weeks leading up to the Santa Fe Concorso last August.
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| "Printed circuit", 1955 style! |
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The Carello trafficator box in position on the firewall
connected to all 10 wires.
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Little Box of Problems
Ten wires lead into and out of the trafficator. There is a ground of course, and a wire supplying power from the battery circuit. One wire supplies power to the light on the dash that flashes to let the driver know the indicator lights are working. Two wires lead back to the turn signal switch on the steering column that activate the circuits powering the front and rear, left and right signal lights through four more wires. And one wire leads to the switch on the master brake cylinder to activate the rear brake lights. Ten wires: pretty simple, really, and the replica wiring harness connections were numbered to match, but it's easy to get confused because you're lying on your back upside down under the dash with the box mounted vertically so you can't see the embossed numbers telling you which wires go where. Try it some time if you don't think that sounds hard--and be sure to add sleep deprivation, problem-solving fatigue, a high degree of growing frustration--and mistakes in information you assumed was correct! With regard to the latter, here are a couple of examples of the kind of things that can take days to figure out:Example One: The front signal lights' three female connections are clearly indicated with a ground, a red socket for the brighter signal light filament and a plain socket for the normal running light filament. But the driver's side unit's sockets were reversed at the factory. Guess what happens when the brighter filament is left on for a few minutes. It melts the plastic lens!
Example Two: The indicator light wiring harness at one point enters a three-wire connector joining two ground wires for the left and right signal lights and a third wire providing power to the circuit. The connector in the new harness was defective, creating an intermittent open circuit for the signal lights on the right side, preventing them from performing their signal function. The lesson is don't assume reproduction parts are faultless just because they are new!
Back Story
I took the trafficator apart for the first time probably 30 years ago. A bent contact strip on top of one of the two electromagnet relays told me it was damaged during a misguided repair attempt made some time before I got the car in 1969. That was easy to fix. But the unit still didn't work. After surfing the Web for a few hours and finding only one reconditioned example for sale at 1,400 Euros, I became much more interested in repairing mine! As luck would have it Gregory, a neighbor who in a previous life used to make AtoCENSORED at Los Alamos dropped by The Shed looking for a challenge. Already feeling an over-abundance of challenges, I eagerly foisted it off on him.A few days later he brought it back successfully repaired with a modern $5.00 flasher module grafted on in place of the original. I considered asking for a warranty but thought that might be pushing my luck. Before installing it I decided to wire it up outside the car using all the parking, turn signal, and brake light components hooked up to a 12V motorcycle battery. I hooked it up, activated the turn signals for the left side and both lights came on . . . but they didn't flash! Then I realized that it takes a few beats for the flasher circuit to warm up. Note to self: flip the turn signal lever well in advance of when you want the lights to come on!
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| The trafficator connected to all four signal lights, brake lights, and the dash light exactly as they would be in the car. |
Now confident that the system was operational I put the lights back on the car, reinstalled and reconnected the trafficator, flipped the turn signal switch . . . and only the signal lights on the left side worked! Arggggh! The more I fiddled with it the more erratic it became. !*#X%&!
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| David's reconditioned trafficator is considerably neater and more robust than the original while retaining all the original parts except the flasher interval timer. |
Time to implement Plan B: Call David Smith. Turns out David knows a guy in New York who repairs trafficators. It takes a while, but when they come back they are fully functional and bulllet-proof. Given my time constraints David offered to give me one of his that was already repaired . . . or was it a loan? I can't remember. David, if it was a loan I promise to send it back as soon as I get mine going again. Really.
When David's rebuilt trafficator arrived I marveled at how neat the conversion to the more modern heat-controlled flash interval regulator was. But the aluminum cover was unrestorable, necessitating swapping it for The Alfatross' relatively unblemished one.
. . . So there The Alfatross and I were one crisp September morning on the lawn at the Santa Fe Concorso with our bright, shiny, better-than-new trafficator in place, waiting to wow the judges. As they poured over the car I eagerly asked one of them if they would like a turn signal demonstration. "This is not that kind of event", he said.
