Flasher units plus water don't go!

[shawn71]

On my way to work last night in my now warm 412 (the joys of a serviceable Eberspacer) the indicators stopped working!

Thankfully the roads were quiet and it's a pretty straight through route but it's a tad irritating when the AGM is at the weekend and that's not straight through and miles and miles away.

Just had a look and it would appear that I might still have a small leak around my window that has allowed some water to seep into the unit. This is beyond help as on opening it there is a circuit board and resistor thingies that baffle me.

The problem is that it is a 4 pin unit. I have spoken to the guys at megabug and they think the 4th pin is for the towbar or some other accessory. Could it be the parking lights that they were originally fitted with that worked on the indicator switch?

Either way they suggested that a 3 pin one would work so I borrowed the one out of the Golf and the indicators worked! Looks like I'll take the Golf to work tonight and wait for the replacement to turn up before reassembling the 412

[Editor]

Let it dry out - you may be lucky!

Normal one from '71 is 111 953 227A. As you say M208 option is a 6-way for trailer use. That's 211 953 231G if you want to keep an eye out for one - Type 2 part so should be more likely to find one.

[JSR-69]

A similar thing happened to me when my inner wing became porous and I managed to repair the flasher unit.

Firstly, 3 or 4 pins ... the 4th pin is for the extra indicator bulb that should light up when you have a trailer or caravan connected as required by our C&U regulations. The unit detects the extra current from the additional flasher bulb. If you don't have a towbar, then a 3-pin unit will work perfectly well.

You can slide the circuit board out of the housing by carefully easing the lips back one at a time and then pulling gently on the pins. The bottom board will wiggle as it's not rigidly fixed to the circuit board.

There's a copper track along the bottom edge of the circuit board ( the opposite end to the pins which are uppermost when in place) and this corrodes when sitting in water. You simply need to bridge the gap in the copper track with a new wire and, if you know which end of a soldering iron to hold without hurting yourself then you'll be able to manage the repair.

As a precaution against a repeat, I drilled a very small hole in the bottom corner of the housing and sprayed everything very liberally with WD40 before reassembling.

Judi