Removal of signal light switch - how to?

[NewFromCanada]

2001 Chev Express 2500 cargo van, 5.7 L with auto tranny, 190,000 km

 

Good evening gentlemen and ladies. I'm a hands on type of guy.

Just discovered your forum, very exciting, hope I'm posting very 1st post correctly?

Just bought this van and looking forward to getting fancy with it.

I've now only got one issue holding me back from my safety inspection.

 

Signal light switch is causing me some grief.

Having devil of a time figuring how to remove it.

Hoping someone wiser can share some of their been-there-done-that wisdom?

 

Presently have the switch end of the harness unscrewed from the column.

Buttt, how do I get the plug end of the harness easily removed from it's mate ? ?

I do have the 8 mm holding bolt unscrewed.

I do have 2 blue 'keeper forks' pulled from either end.

 

I've already pulled and pried on this for close to 2 hours, all to zero avail!

Even removed drivers seat to give me lots more elbow room.

Traded off with a friend to take a crack at it. Also to no avail. :{

 

I'm guessing this is the "baddie" plug I heard a friend talking about years ago.

Which leads me to guess that some enterprising person has been shouldered with this task on more than one occasion before me.

It somehow makes sense that some wise soul has figured a way to easily separate this plug.

Is there a custom puller of some kind?

 

In summary:

Please help (if you can).

 

Thank you in advance

 

 

Sincerely

 

Newbie From Canada

[DangerDaveFreestyle]

Try to get an official service manual for it somehow. The haynes ones are eh, okay.

If you search enough youll see the sections youre looking for. theres this one forum with ase mechanics who answer questions others have asked and you can observe and they show the instructions.

And always troubleshoot to be sure its the bad part.

[NewFromCanada]

Thank you Dave.

(nice looking van you drive there).

 

Hanes has annoyed me in the past but happy to give them another go.

 

I do have something else to report here.

I've managed to come up with some egg on my face here, very embarrassed about it.

I'm trying to figure how to tell this without making it look like I'm blaming someone else.

 

Lets say it like this, I mistakenly told a friend who was helping me that the hold-together bolt was 8 mm. Friend had taken dozens of turns on the retainer bolt with that 8mm socket.

Wednesday morning I discovered it was in fact a 7 mm socket that was needed.

And indeed it came apart most readily. <sigh>

 

I found another signal light switch and it is now installed.

 

... ... ...

 

Thinking I should quickly change my name to egg-face or something like that

This whole signal light switch change-out was to solve a much bigger hair-puller challenge I am having.

 

- My signal lights are flashing 'double' speed.

- With headlights on they go to flashing triple speed.

 

And there's a further twist,(o-n-l-y with headlights on),

- turning on left signal, the marker lite filament in the right front 1157 starts to pulse with the flasher.

I've been calling it the 'brite-dim dance'.

 

Jacked up in a friends country driveway (don't have ready access to many things).

Changed many things / done many things to solve this issue, all to no avail (so far).

 

The reason for changing out the signal light switch was two-fold.

1- all things seemed to point to the signal light switch

2 - moving the sig switch slightly was causing some weird manifestations

 

 

What I've done to date:

 

- changed out all four 1157 bulbs (no, they're not led)

- installed 4 brand new ground jumpers, one at each 1157 bulb socket, (just for fun)

- inspect & verify each 1157 pigtail socket appears to be brand new, VERY clean

- changed out the 4 pin cube flasher located immediately below the steering wheel

 

- scoured the underneath looking for a corroded harness plug somewhere

turned out to be not necessary because in a van the whole harness is all inside

- found a badly corroded trailer plug, chopped it off - pulled wires inside

- replaced signal light switch

 

Gentlemen, I'm tearing my hair out here.

Can hardly think of a single thing left to do.

Contemplated even changing out the headlight switch that's mounted in the dash panel.

Was advised to Not bother, so haven't.

 

There are no other bulbs in the signal light circuit other than the previous mentioned four 1157's, unless you want to count the 2 sig indictor bulbs in the instrument cluster).

 

There's only 2 thing/ possibilities left that I can think of.

 

1 - the front harness that feeds the front signal / headlights

It's out in the elements, hidden behind the grille, cowling somewhere?

But god knows what I have to remove to find those harness plugs?

 

2 - The front outside fuse panel is stuffed back into a dark hole.

You can peak in around a myriad of things and actually see about half of it.

Clearly designed only for the experienced hand of a been-there-before dude.

 

To get at that and have a look for some corrosion on the underlying circuit board it looks, on 1st blush, like the left front fender removal would be a good idea.

Followed by the removal of the big crossover bar that supports top of rad (and a dozen other things also fastened to it).

 

 

If anyone has any thoughts, ideas, or concrete solutions, I would so totally love to hear from you.

 

Thank you in advance.

 

PS:

There's only one other tidbit of information I can think to add in here.

 

I bought this van back in July,

Had a safety inspection done on it and all the lights etc worked perfectly.

 

It has been sitting in a parking lot for the last 4 months waiting for me to move forward and do something with it.

I'm by no means an expert, but past history has taught me that crazy things can happen to a vehicle that sits and is not driven for too long.

 

All to say, it used to work and now it doesn't.

[DangerDaveFreestyle]

"Jacked up in friends driveway"

Must have garage with concrete floor, hvac, and adequate lighting.

If that is out of the question at your moment then a tent garage with wood platform over gravel, or a cheap awning over such driveway or shade tree area with a nearby workstation on wheels with shelves and worktop platform with vise and an extension cord setup will do. Haynes does suck. Good service manuals can be had on pdf for quick ipad or iphone flippin. And, you can probly still find all the articles and sections you need for free.

 

Use navy 6 step troubleshooting method.

 

Purchase: Test light probe with ground clamp, Multimeter, Tone Generator (aka fox n hound)

Every switch position and movement has a corresponding wire continuity, and every wire can be traced in hard to reach places using a wand with simple harbor freight gadget. You also may be having some relay/control module/hl switch/ and or ground fault issues. And testing them is super easy.

 

Fuse box is most definitely tucked in there, so utilizing the map and sticking the right tool in the slots yields a desirable result.

 

A bulb blinking at faster rate is the same for motorcycles its indicating a fault,

 

The douchekebobs that inspect your vehicle suck. Its a waste of time, tax dollars, and has little if any impact on safety. (I.e. intermittent electrical faults, brake pads almost gone and will be in a month but a slivver is there at the time and passes, billy bob knows how to use a flathead screwdriver and a half inch wrench and voila she passed emissions)

Most of these bolts are def metric, its about time, whoever puts a 9/32 or 5/16, or 7/16 size on something as opposed to a easy whole number can suckit ! Lookout for those oddball sizes. It should all be 8, 10, 12, 14, 17, 19

So they can still take their 7mm bolt and suckit !

 

For electrical issues, these tools are a lifesaver, for example......

Before this brand new van i had an 04. Horn didnt work. I found the problem was a defective clockspring. That little tone generator gave me good signal at the horn button, but not down at the column harness where it goes through the firewall and eventually the horn relay in the fusebox. You press the wheel, it makes a ground, thus closing the contacts in the relay so a small amount of power controls a larger amount of power with bigger wires which makes it go beep.

Can you imagine going back and forth to the parts store buying relays or horns to "hope" it fixes the problem and youve got this "hunch" it must be this or it must be that? Can you imagine purchasing the special gm puller adapters for a steering wheel puller in order to remove this thing and check it visually?