Exploring the Turn Signal Switch
To this day I still can’t get the LED Turn signals to blink. I did get them to work last summer, but they quickly reverted to their non-blinky state soon after. I have no earthly clue as to why, but it doesn’t worry me. The first place I suspected that could be the root of the problem is the switch. I figured I’d poke around in there and try to simplify the already overcomplicated antiquated switching mechanism. Take a look, it’s weird.
I don’t think I ever really looked inside even when I was installing the clubmans.
Filthy. I suspect Honda used some kind of dialectic grease on the sliding mechanism and all sorts of dirt and grime collected in there for 35 years.
It really is a mechanical wonder but could have been engineered with a much more simplistic design. The first thing I knew needed to go was the Orang/White and Light Blue/White wires. They belonged to the running lights on the original turn signals. It’s these wires I suspected might be causing my no-blinky malfunction. Let’s clip them and toss them for good.
After I took the whole switch apart I cleaned the grease off of everything, including the weird sliding switch mechanism.
Filthy.
These little sliding things come off too.
Shot of the rails.
The spring switch part was also covered in grease and grime. One more interesting aspect of this piece is that there is a ball bearing that’s used to either: 1.) Ground the switch, or 2.) Help slide the switch from left to right. Be very careful and don’t drop it and lose it.
The bottom housing, once again stuffed with some kind of lubricant or grease.
I cleaned every bit of it.
Here you can see the ball bearing back in the housing. It sits in a little triangle groove which has a slit that runs left and right. The other set of wires that I found odd in the switch were the Brown/White wires. The CB550 manual defines these as the tach and speedo bulb wires. Meaning that the lights in the speedo and tach are for some reason running into the turn signal switch which means they are also unnecessary in here. The Brown/White wires are set up to be actively fed power either in the middle, left or right switch mode. Totally unnecessary, we can feed those bulbs power from within the headlight bucket. Let’s de-solder them and get them out of here.
There, as it should be. All we need are the left and right turn signal wires and the pulsing gray wire coming from the relay.
I also went ahead and trimmed some more length off the wires in the headlight bucket.
As a rule of thumb if I take off a fastener that’s rusted or stripped I never put it back on so these bolts are going in the trash.
My local hardware store didn’t have the stainless steel fasteners in the 25mm length I need to replace the originals so I had to get black. These black allen head bolts will eventually rust. I coated them with a little WD40 before installing them.
So, all done and still I’m not getting any blinky-blinky. The lights just come on and stay on as they did before. I have successfully narrowed down the problem. It’s not the switch. Now I’ll have to look carefully at the ground wires in my bucket.
Good day gentlemen. See you next weekend.
