RJT> GW> That would be better as a technical explanation. In fact older
RJT> GW> vehicle flasher units were capacitor/relay oscilators

RJT> JB> the really old ones were bimetalic.

RJT>I thought that most of them still were!  In fact,  at the auto parts store you
RJT>can get an "electronic" one but it costs a bit more --
they're sold in those
RJT>cases where a vehicle is towing or otherwise has more lights than the ordinary
RJT>one will deal with.

RJT> JB> those capacitor ones don't work to well when they get hot... (I've
RJT> JB> not compared a bimetalic one's performance)

RJT> GW> Time has dimmed the memory of how it was done but it used a
RJT> GW> electrolytic capacitor and relied on a controlled difference between
RJT> GW> the pull in and drop out voltages of the relay.

RJT> JB> the ones I've dissasembled used a relay with two windings. and had
RJT> JB> the current flow one way through the cap and windinh with the
RJT> JB> contacts closed and the opposite direction with them open.

RJT>The one I've got disassembled on my desk here has three connection points,
RJT>with the bimetallic strip between two of them and contact points for the load
RJT>between two of them.

RJT>Maybe it's not a flasher?  I seem to remember some vehicles I owned having a
RJT>similarly packaged device in the dashboard that they referred to as an
RJT>"instrument voltage regulator",  and most flashers that
I've encountered in
RJT>recent years had only two pins,  not three.

Ford & Chrysler (for two I know of) had a "vibrator" for providing 5.0v
to the dash instruments. The open and close timing of the contacts
regulated the 12V DC at 5.0 V. When this thing went bad the first
indication one got was that the gas guage still showed you had some gas
when in fact you ran out!  That's how I learned about this way back in
the 50s. The flasher for turn signal lights was similar. There were two
different ones I know of. The first was a standard one for most cars. The
other was a heavy duty one for cars towing trailers - which added more
lights to the set up. With the standard flasher unit one could tell when
it was going bad because the signal light would go on but would not
flash. Also, if the wrong one was installed the lights would flash way
too fast. Been there and done that!

Jay
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 þ OLXWin 1.00a þ Experience is waht you get just after you need it.