Indicator earth issue.

[djwhittaker14]

Hi as always trying to tap into some of the knowledge on here. I’ve been having an issue with the passenger side indicator mounted on the wing. After tracing it to an earth issue (mounted via a rivet to the wing stay) I managed to clean it up and the indicator started working again. Today I was doing some other work and the indicator was very dim. After cleaning it and applying some penetrating fluid to the rivet it was no better and then stopped working all together. I was trying to locate where the earth issue actually is and it would seem that the wire and connections are fine but it’s not getting a good voltage from the rivet location. The indicator is at full brilliance when I use a spare piece of wire to short it to another earth point. However it also won’t short to any of the other unpainted surfaces on the lower or upper suspension arms. It is back to full brilliance if touched onto the tie rod. So my question is (finally) where does the wing stay actually get its earth from (ie via the chassis). If I clean this mystery location up will the indicator work again or do I just need to replace the rivet/run a new earth wire into the chassis and a different earth point. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Murph7355]

What are the connection points for those other components like back to the main chassis?

[djwhittaker14]

They seem very ok nothing major I can see the car has been on axle stands since Christmas so potentially the lack of movement around the contact points is causing the issue?

[700newtons]

I think that this problem is not uncommon. It happened to me. I ran a thin copper wire to the chassis as a bodge fix.

On a later car I simply replaced the side indicators completely with led indicators fixed in back of the headlamps. This looks tidy and works well.

Simon

[djwhittaker14]

Thanks. Sadly that isn’t an option as I would be left with the holes in the CF cycle wings. I spent a few hours on it today and run an earth cable down the wing stay tube with the indicator wire. I then spliced it into the earth from the headlight so it now goes into the econoseal plug. Seems to work much better.