Rebuilding and Re-Wiring a SignalStat 700

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willyD

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 16, 2014
Messages
428
Location
Montana
I recently rebuilt and rewired a SignalStat 700 that was in my 36 when I got it. Here's my attempt at writing up what I did and why. Please feel free to ask questions if you have them and I will do what I can to answer them.

As I often do, I forgot to take a before pic of the switch. It was rusty and had more than a few splotches of bird leavings on it. I pulled it apart and used an hand wire brush and then a small wire wheel on a Dremel to clean and buff the sheet metal bits. That part isn't really anything to write about though.

These switches were originally wired such that the wires coming out of them are a left front, left rear, right front, right rear and power. The indicators on the switch are both on no matter which side you are signalling. One indicator light is for the front and one for the rear. Their purpose was to tell you if you have a bad blinker bulb and not to show which side you are signalling. That's not a bad setup if you have a dedicated blinker bulb at each corner but most modern wiring harnesses use the same bulb for brake lights and blinkers so this causes an issue when you try to use a converter to combine the blinkers and brakes. It seems that having both indicator bulbs come on no matter the side signalled back feeds a little voltage into the other side and the converters get confused and blink both sides.

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Because of this, I decided to separate the two sides and also rewire slightly in order to have one left (front and back) and one right wire (front and back) and have the indicator bulbs on the switch match the side indicated rather than be front and back.

First, you need to pull the metal cover off of the switch mechanism.

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You will see that there are 3 contact tabs on the rotating mechanism. The tab that points toward the body of the circuit board is the one that illuminates the indicator bulbs.

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I bent that tab up until it no longer made contact. This makes it so that both bulbs no longer light up in either signal position.

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On the back of the board, you see the original wiring. Red is right front, green is left front, yellow is power, black is right rear, and white is left rear.

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I replaced the yellow, green and white wires with new wire. I then jumpered the original green and black wires together and added a new black wire to that contact. The new black wire is now a ground for the signal bulbs. One bulb is still connected to each signal side via the board. Before, rather than grounding the bulbs, current ran into the actual turn signals through the contact that I bent up earlier. Now, that contact is no longer made but I'm grounding the bulbs instead. That isolates each side.

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Finally, swap in 12volt bulbs, if you are running a 12 volt system, cover your wire bundle as you like and put the whole thing back together.

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Last edited:
You did a great job on explaining it WillyD! Lots of people get lost on electrics when they stray from "as is"...:D You did a good job on rewiring for re-use too. Excellent post!
 

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