Kaiser-Willys/Omix Ada 947348 Turn Signal Switch

I ordered one of these on-line from K-W about a month back.

In the interest of full disclosure, the installation was in my Polaris 900 Trail, but in all aspects, this was no different than any 12V negative ground system.  So, after welding up a custom aluminum bracket (the Polaris tilt column has no place for the hose clamp mount provided), running new lamp wires to all four corners, and hooking up the leads as per the above diagram, did it work?  Of course not.  The only thing that functioned was the internal indicator lamp.  There was nominally zero resistance between the lamp leads and that black ground wire in all positions.  I didn't have much success with the last attempted return to K-W so I just removed it and tossed it on the bench, re-drilled my bracket, and installed one of the Spartan units I had hanging on the shop wall.  After minor re-wiring for the 3 pin flasher unit-success.  But no flashers. 

I then proceeded to disassemble the Omix unit and it was more than obvious what the problems were.  With the top cover off, you can see where the only connection to the blue wire from the flasher unit is: the internal indicator lamp.

The black ground wire connection?  Well that is connected to the contact plate for all four lamp leads (yellow, green, orange, and brown).  Nominal resistance indeed.

It should be noted that the ONLY thing in this unit that actually requires a ground is the internal indicator bulb. 

The good news?  You can make this unit functional if you want to spend a little time on it.  This is nothing other than a make-break rotary switch with an additional slider for the flasher function that makes contact with all four lamp leads.  Of the input leads, only the red wire to the brake light switch is correctly wired.  The black wire can be de-soldered from the above plate, spliced and connected to the internal white wire's connection to the wand spring detent or directly to the lamp.  The white wire should be completely removed.  The blue wire, previously attached to the internal indicator lamp needs to be moved to the location where the black wire was originally attached.

The four way flasher slider requires no modification other than removal of the white wire soldered to it.

The two rotary wipers are concentric. 

The outer ring controls the brake light/turn signal interaction and again, needs no modification.  The internal ring controls the right/left turn signal function.  As received, this ring has a wiper soldered to it to ground to the wand shaft.  The ground wiper needs to be removed and the ID of the wiper opened up a bit to prevent grounding to the wand shaft.  I did this with a Dremel tool sanding drum.  Also make sure the location tabs are snug in the plastic mounting plate.  

Initially, I soldered a lead from this wiper to feed the internal indicator lamp. 

This only works with the left/right turn functions and not with the four way flasher function.  I used it this way until my 1 amp diodes arrived from Digikey.  I used two of those diodes soldered directly to the yellow and green lamp leads with the married output feeding the internal indicator lamp (which I also replaced with a T 1 3/4 LED in a PVC holder with the black ground wire run direct to the LED). 

After a good slathering of dielectric grease and reassembly the unit works perfect.  Was it worth the effort?  Probably not.  Another lesson why you should not buy ANY parts for an old Jeep on-line without finding out who actually builds them.  How something like this makes it through the engineering/design, manufacturing process, and retail being completely non-functional is completely beyond comprehension.  The only way I can see this unit actually functioning as received is to run dedicated grounds to all four turn signal lamps (completely isolated lamp sockets) with the positive leads to the lamps wired direct to the fuse.  Then running those ground wires back to the unit.  Downside?  Besides swapping out all the lamp units, there will still be an internal short with the correctly wired brake light switch lead and the wand would then be hot.  The latter may make for some interesting driving experiences.

If you do or have purchased this unit MOST DEFIANTLY assemble the entire system on the garage/shop floor and test it with a 12 volt DC power supply.  That may save you a lot of wasted time.