Community Member Credit: Frank / motorvate.ca
About one year ago (2000), I was driving back from work, and I saw a single streamer of smoke coming up from my steering column. I immediately tried all the switches on the steering column, thinking that I will find out which switch has gone bad, and maybe I will make it stop.
Well, everything worked just fine, and the smoke did stop. A month later the same thing happened, a single streamer of smoke.
After the first time I parked my car in the garage thinking “I hope that I don’t set my garage on fire if she lights up.” It never happened again.
In August 2000, when I signaled to turn left, after the turn was completed the signal would cancel, but the turn signal relay would click about twice the usual speed, “click-click-click-click-click” Luckily for me the turn signal light did not flash, it was just the relay.
I removed the relay, and opened it up. It is not your typical relay. It is a relay with printed circuit board on the side. I noticed that the circuit board was cracked, and it looked like a few traces may not be in full contact. I added a little bit of solder, thinking that it was now fixed. I was wrong.
Now it is March 2001, and I noticed that my turn signal was not “smooth” like I remembered it. It was very notchy. I removed it from the steering column, and saw this:
The YELLOW ARROWS point to some melted plastic. The RED ARROWS point to what the contacts should look like. The yellow arrows in the right picture above, show little plastic “parking” islands are melted. This made the contacts sit lower, and they were only touching a little, causing a little current to flow through the relay. The relay senses current, via the built in IC, and makes the relay pulse, but because the current is very small, it flashes faster. (just like when you have a burned out turn signal bulb, the flasher goes faster)
Anyways, this is where the smoke came from. YEA! I found it. My car is not going to burn down!
I tried to “file & fix” the contacts, but it did not work.
I called up North End Nissan, and 1 day and $71 later I had my turn signal back to where it was, nice and smooth, with no harsh clicks.
Problem solved in 10 minutes, but it took over a year to figure it out.
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