Hey everyone. If anyone is from the Metro New Jersey/New York area, you all know that we have a lot of snow lieing around that is melting in a hurry, as well as a lot of rain, which means a lot of standing water. That said.....

Was leaving work today and I had to drive through a large puddle at the mouth of the driveway. Drove through it very slowly, hooked a left and about 100 feet later a little bit of smoke started coming from the steering column. I blew on it and it kept coming up, so I turned the car off and pulled over. I waited a min and sniffed around and it seemed to have stopped. I turned the car back on and checked all my systems, everything worked except for my left turn signal.

The light does not come on at all. The right signal works fine, the hazards work fine, but the left signal doesn't work when you press it down to make a turn. It will work however, if you press it half-assed such as you might when changing lanes on the highway.

What do you think happened/how do you think I can fix it? I would say the puddle I drove through was about 6 inches deep...nothing extroadinary.

Thanks in advance for the replies.

 

TTT

 

Im not sure if this is the problem, but that sounds exactly like what my car did when my flasher unit went bad. It is a cylindircal looking metal connector and IS located under the dash. Its real cheap to replace, so you might want to give it a shot. Hope this helps.

 

what's real strange is that today it started working fine again. *shrug*

 

First check out your turn signal fuse. The fuse may be burned a little, but will still slightly work. The turn signal flasher controls both the left and right signals, so this most likely isn't the problem. The left turn signal bulb may be burned a little.

 

The turn signal flasher can only go partly bad. It is very possibly the problem. Only one of the contacts goes bad. Like when a tailight socket goes bad, only a contact or two can go bad and the light will work in some functions and not in others. If it is working intermitently than a bad contact makes perfect sense. Check the contacts on all of the left turn signal bulb connections for corrosion, if they look fine than spend the 4 dollars and try the flasher unit. Typically I would not think it was a flasher unit either, but since you said there was smoke from under the dash, thats all I can think it could be. Maybe you just shorted a wire. And it is almost certainly NOT a fuse, a fuse is either broken or not, so electiricity passes through it or it doesnt.