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Fri Jul 04, 2008 10:07 am

Having a frustrating wiring issue. I am looking for a detailed diagram for the Emergency lights. Not the technical one, the one I can understand! Let me explain just a bit more.........Had the new Thing shipped in from out of state. Had it inspected by a great mechanic before it came. all is well mostly....

gets here, we spend two glorius days together. Made the first doctors check up for the new Thing but its not for two weeks. (hard to get in around here - not many air cooled tech's.

I lost my blinkers on day two. and the odometer. and then the lights all together. lovely....

OK, got the headlight issue taken care of. Originally the blinkers was just the flasher. I have a 4 prong flasher. called around, everyone said, no big deal, use 3 prong, make sure its grounded, all will be well. OK. did that. but right after that is when lights went. so my husband, who is a mechanic (not air cooled) put everything back to where we started and as luck would have it, i locked myself out of my other car and had to drive the Thing to work yesterday so I assigned one of my employees the task of tracing the headlights (and wiper motor) wiring (wires on wiper motor came out when i flipped my windshield down to show someone) so he did that, and all was well, except he left blinkers for my hubby.

now there is no power to the flasher. the "white" wire has no power.

this apparently runs to the hazard switch. except the black wire with green stripes is not going anywhere at all, literally it is not connected to anything.

now clearly i am not overly mechanically inclined, which is why my wonderful Thing was going for routine "check up", but i'm not gonna lie and say I didn't kinda not give hubby a choice when i bought it. He is much more comfortable with his 79 vette, our chevy truck, gmc envoy and grand am. the Thing is very new to him, and I am looking for someone who can break down for me the 7 wires on the back of the hazard switch and their purposes before he gives me one more of "those" looks!!

surely the Thing will grow on him??........... props to him for loving me enough to try, but its been 6 hours now today and its not getting better...lol...

any help is appreciated......

Fri Jul 04, 2008 1:24 pm

Felicia42 wrote:
now there is no power to the flasher. the "white" wire has no power.

this apparently runs to the hazard switch. except the black wire with green stripes is not going anywhere at all, literally it is not connected to anything.

....

Okay, well I can talk you through it as I look at the circuit diagram. How this works, is the white wire can get power from two sources in the emergency flasher switch, in the emergency position it gets its power from terminal 30 via fuse number 10. That won't affect your normal turn signals though. When the e-flasher switch is in the normal position, it supplies power to the white wire by connecting to the green wire that goes to fuse number 1. So check that you have power coming out of fuse number one and that the green terminal 15 wire has power - the ignition key has to be ON for there to be power there.

If you have power to the green wire (terminal 15) at the switch, but nothing coming out of it to the "+" white wire, the switch is probably bad. However you can usually SEE those kinds of switches when they are bad, as they fall apart, the whole board with the wire connectors pops out of the switch.

Now that Black wire with green stripes, there are actually two of them, one goes to the turn signal switch, the other one goes off to the right side turn signal bulbs.

Oh yeah, replacing the 4 terminal relay with a 3 terminal, works good - but it MUST be a euro-spec relay with terminals 49, 49a and 31. You connect that extra 4th wire that was previously "kbl" to 49a.

If you have trouble with those circuit diagrams that VW went to for 1973 and later models, you might look at the vehicle-layout style 1970-71 Bug diagram, as it is quite similar to your Thing.

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/info/wiring/bug_7071.jpg

I hope that helped a little bit...

-Andy

Fri Jul 04, 2008 6:07 pm

Andy -

Thank you very much. I will give this to him and see where it gets us. Now the battery is having an issue. it simply will not stay charged since this whole thing.

aaarrghh..............

thank you for your help! I appreciate it very very much.

Felicia

Mon Jul 14, 2008 5:55 pm

OK, so for the novice in me -

if there is power in fuse 1 but NO power to #15, now what?

arrghhh.........

Mon Jul 14, 2008 6:13 pm

ok - so the blue wire, that becomes the black wire with a white stripe and green small stripes - comes off the flasher, goes where?........ it is just hanging out in space, but has power to it. i swear gremlins came and played with my wires in the middle of the night! everything worked, now nothing does. impossible to follow anything as there are SO many "changes". three after market toggle switches on dash are adding to headaches....

can you help with where the blue & black/white/green wire should go? i am 90% positive, from the diagram, it should go to the back of the emergency switch, but there is no place for it to go. so possible the gremlins just switched everything? (had an employee switch out flasher and all hell broke loose)

Mon Jul 14, 2008 8:27 pm

Okay to answer your questions from the above two posts:

Power to terminal 15 is ONLY supplied when the ignition key is turned on. With the key off, no power.

The Blue wire, is 49a and it goes from terminal 49a on the turn signal relay over to terminal 49a on the emergency switch. That wire should also split into that black with green/white stripes wire, at the relay, and from there it goes over to the turn signal switch, which then decides whether it will be a left or right turn.

Hopefully that helps out. Also I went and made up this image as well, a section of a 74 Thing wiring diagram, I added some labels to the components:

-Andy

Tue Jul 15, 2008 4:55 pm

andy -

THANK YOU VERY VERY MUCH!!!! Your help is much appreciated and between your help and my fahters patience - all is well again! so it turns out that when i put the windshield down at one point to "show someone" the wiring harness was disturbed, but the previous owner had put three extra sets of lights on this (which are likely being removed) and so the wiring behind the dash was crazy and there was no logical connections. Like I said - all is well again - almost ready for inspection!! THANK YOU!!!!!!!

~ Felicia

Tue Jul 15, 2008 7:38 pm

You're welcome..! I'm glad you got it running, hope you get it on the road soon!
-Andy