So today my wife calls me and says she smelled something burnt from her dash, its a 97 850. Well now her turn signals, hazards and brights don't work. I figured it was a flasher or relay, so I went to the auto parts store and picked one up. It's a three prong relay...

I spent an hour trying to find the relay under the dash to no avail. When I pulled the hazard switch out I noticed its way longer. I did a search and can't find any definitive information.

Did I get the right thing? Pic is below. One the right is what I bought, the one on the left is what I pulled...

 

Um, did you ck the fuse?

And no, those two things in the pic are not the same. The flasher switch (item on left) is common failure point too; is that where the magic smoke leaked from (i.e. does it smell burnt)?

 

I can't seem where to find the relay goes.

The hazard switch doesn't have a strong smell of burnt-ness.

I checked the fuses and they are are fine.

 

I just rechecked the fuses. Hazard buse was blown. Put a new one in and everything was groovyfor like five minutes. Now it blows the fuse everytime I insert a new one. It is fuse 13.

 

-I took apart the steering wheel and took the turn signal arm stalk out and made sure all the connections were good. I put it back together.
-Voltage at the fuse looks ok, put a new fuse in.
-Doesn't pop
-Turn signals and hazards working again.
-Then a tiny bit of smoke coming from the harness that runs parallel to the steering column. Wires aren't hot nor can I find any bare wire anywhere.

Super wierd.

 

Bump to the top.

 

Have you been having this problem for 2 years?

 

LOL... kinda

When I first had the problem I took off the knee bolsters to diagnose and see if I could find anything in the area metallic touching the wiring harness or anything. The problem had gone away for a long time because I never put the bolsters back in. A little while back I put the bolsters back in, and the problem came back. At the time I wasn't thinking about that being an issue. Today I was looking around at it and saw that there is a wire touching the metallic bolster, it was shorting to the bolster.

Problem found/solved (question mark/period)

 

It's nice to know there are other procrastinators out there and I'm not alone.