Greg Mayman wrote in a message to George White:

 -=> George White said to Greg Mayman
 -=> about "{at}%^{at}#$%^ VEROBOARD" on 03-28-04  23:09.....

 GW> Probably not, the stuff I worked on was for commercial vehicles and
 GW> had to last _much_ longer than the stuff on cars. Typically a
 GW> truck/bus would be expected to do in a year the total lifetime mileage
 GW> of a car (ie about 100,000 miles). Time off road for a small component
 GW> to be fixed costs lots of real money, so they'll pay more up front -
 GW> it matters to the operators.
  
 GM> Yes. Those thermal flashers had the habit of failing at the most
 GM> unpredictable and inconvenient times,

I had mine fail on me one time -- when I was going to take the "road
test" portion of getting my driver's license!  In Manhattan,  NYC...

Fortunately,  the NY State Driver's Manual at that time also made a big
deal out of the use of hand signals (don't know if they still do or not), 
and the examiner went along with me informing him that this was what I
would be doing,  as stopping at a service station to get the flasher
changed didn't fix it.  They'd changed the wrong one,  the one for the
4-way flash!

 GM> or worse still working well when the generator or alternator had 
 GM> pushed the battery up to its max voltage and then failing to work 
 GM> when the engine dropped back to an idle.

I can't say I've hit that but turn signals getting *real* slow would happen
if there were a problem with voltage,  too.  It was one way of the
vehicle's electrical system had of letting you know that there was a
problem with the battery.  

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