Turn Signal fuse shorts shuts off car.

[Baja54]

Hello new to this sight. So i'm new owner of a 71 super beetle and as the title shows having a serious issue. When i use the left turn signal the fuse for the turn signals blows and the hole car shuts off. I'm thinking that maybe i when did the alternator conversion that i messed up the wiring and is causing the short there. So yea i really need some help i' still semi new to electrical stuff.

[Cusser]

First thing would be to remove both left turn signal bulbs and see if starting VW and pushing the turn signal to left still causes the fuse to blow. If not, replace one at a time and do same check, to isolate whether front or rear. If they both show this issue, I'd trace out/check the wire in the trunk that goes to left bulbs, might have a bad wire connection. We've seen two wires simply twisted together with no covering to expertly-soldered connections covered with heat shrink.


Look at the two sockets themselves, and make sure that the dual-filament bulbs have been inserted correctly, no junk sitting under the bulbs, etc..
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1970 VW (owned since 1972) and 1971 VW Convertible (owned since 1976), second owner of each. The '71 now has the 1835 engine, swapped from the '70. Second owner of each. 1988 Mazda B2200 truck, 1998 Frontier, 2014 Yukon, 2004 Frontier King Cab. All manual transmission except for the Yukon. http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=335294 http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=335297

[sjbartnik]

You have a couple issues here. First is the dead short somewhere in the left turn signal system which you can sort as Cusser says.

The second problem is that it shuts off the car. This would indicate that someone has mis-wired something (either you or PO). As VW wired it, the wire that runs to the ignition coil is not fused. The car should run just fine with no fuses at all. So probably someone has hooked up your ignition coil power wire to the fused side of the fuse box rather than the unfused side.

You will want to fix that, as you don't want to be in a situation where a blown fuse causes the engine to stop, like when pulling out on the road in front of a truck for example.
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1965 Volkswagen 1500 Variant S
2000 Kawasaki W650

[Cusser]