Can you help me track down my turn signal problem?

[Sac '68 sport]

I keep blowing fuses. All other lights work brake lights and running lights work great. I put in an all new wiring harness (the e-bay slightly bronco specific harness) when I did the rebuild and have had this problem from the start.
It started with only the right side. Left worked fine, and when I switch over to the right it would blow, but now after fooling around with it today it's blowing fuses on both sides.
So here is where I'm at.

Thinking I scraped a wire in the column putting it together, I pulled apart the connection from the main harness to the column and checked each column wire to ground and got no continuity. With the turn signal switched to on I have continuity between 2 wires on the left and two and 2 on the right so I think the column wiring is good.

I put in a new fuse and pulled all the light buckets and I can turn on the blinkers to both sides and the fuse does not blow. I get a solid light on the cluster. I plug in one light bucket (doesn't matter which one) and the fuse blows.

At the connections to the buckets with all of them unplugged I have continuity with ground on one wire at each connection point.

I'm about at the end of my knowledge but I'm assuming this is being caused by something grounding under the dash since it started blowing fuses on the previously ok left side after monkeying around down there.

What should I be checking next and how?

 

[Sac '68 sport]

just checked column wiring again and now; with left turn signal switched on I have conductivity between 4 wires, with right on I have 3 wires. What the hell? With nothing switched on there is no conductivity between any wires or to ground. maybe it is in the column.

 

[DirtDonk]

Does your harness have a separate "rear" section at all? Or is it all one long branch from some splice somewhere to the front and the rear?
What I'm thinking is, that if there is a separate connector for the rear stuff, you can pull it apart to at least narrow it down to see if the front only works, while the rear is unplugged.

The ground connection to both (or even one) of the center contacts in the rear sockets doesn't sound right, but you can get funky readings through light sockets sometimes depending on where the switch is.
The actual grounding happens through the socket body only (the side case in other words) and not either of the center contacts. Those are for: 1. run/park/tail lamp and 2. brake lamp so should not have a true ground connection at all.

Good luck. Hopefully you can at least narrow it down some, but it's sounding strange to do it at first only on one side, and now on both.
Might just take a little longer to find the culprit.

Paul

 

[Sac '68 sport]

Found it. Pulled the wheel and adapter off the column and the signal shut off cam deal (steel) came loose and was rattling around in there grounding things out. Chucked it and everything works great now. I'll just have to remember to turn off the blinker on my own now. Glad it was something simple.

 

[DirtDonk]

Excellent! Glad you found it.
But why chuck that thing-a-ma-bob? Why not stick it in there with some epoxy, silicone, or whatever, to keep it where it belongs?
At least that way it would be unlikely to come out again and you wouldn't be stuck in manual mode.

Paul

 

[Viperwolf1]

Those cancelling cams are getting hard to find and work much better than aftermarket steering wheel pins.