From the Saturday Morning Mechanic Show

     I do a live radio show and one of the callers had an interesting question. Her 2002 Chevrolet Impala would randomly make a buzzing sound and the turn signals would not work correctly when she tried to use them. She also mentioned that the lights on the dash would flash to which I asked her if she was referring to the turn indicators and she said yes. I then asked her if the four way (hazzard) flashers worked normally when she pushed that button and she said yes they did.

    This is a common description of the flasher unit failing inside the four way flasher button, but like any failure it needs to be confirmed before one simply replaces a part. The caller had already had several people look at the car for this issue but it wasn't acting up when they did so they did the right thing which was to ask her to return when it did act up. Just because failures of that switch are common, that does not mean that it is bad this time. In the past if a shop would replace that part based on nothing except experience, and doing that failed to fix the car, they would end up with an unhappy customer and be refunding the money and it didn't matter how it was explained, they were danged if they did try, and danged if they didn't.

    She called us at our shop a few hours later that day and to their credit even armed with more information her local shop didn't want to see the car, nor change the flasher without confirming the cause and she wanted to know if we would look at it. I told her pretty much the same thing, except we would start testing and see if we can determine anything. She showed up about 3:30pm and we brought the car in the door. Now when we were talking she changed the story a little bit. The lights that were acting strangely wasn't the turn indicators, it was several of the other lights on the dash which included the airbag light, and the antilock brake lights. She also said quite happily that it started doing it on her way down to the shop. Now things were starting to make more sense, when the ABS and SIR lights started coming on, that's when the turn signals wouldn't work and a buzzing could be heard in the dash if you tried to use them. That's a completely different scenario compared to what she seemed to describe while we were on the air.

    Based on this updated information, what path would you choose to start your testing? Do you have any expectations as to what you are likely to find? Use the comments to field your ideas and I'll respond with what you would have found.

#4way, #four way, #Chevrolet, #Impala, #turn signals, #Radio, #saturday morning mechanic, #antilock, #brakes, #buzz, #hazzard