Saturday, July 12, 2014

It was time to troubleshoot our blinker problem.  We determined the bug was in the Blue Ox BX88206 7 to 6 Coiled Electrical Cable.  I was dreading the prospect of forking over $100 to replace that puppy.

Joani searched the internet for anything related to the turn signal problem we had, while I checked the cable.  As I was checking continuity of the cable I found a short between two of the seven pins.  I knew that should not be right, but when I had Joani help me with it I could no longer find a short.  I opened up and inspected the seven to six pin adapter, but found nothing suspicious.

I was ready to quit for a while, when Joani found something describing how one guy disassembled the cable and found a lot of corrosion.  As she was reading, it hit me, I never tried to open the cable.  When I did I found one wire completely loose, free to short to any of the other wires and almost all of the other wires were not tight!  You have to love it when you can actually find and correct a problem - what a great feeling!

 Loosen the large set screw and the tiny screw at the end.

 Slide the metal casing back to reveal the individual wires.

Tighten each screw after making sure the wires are well seated.

NOTE:  Thanks to an Amazon review by Trimerus we will now do regular maintenance on our cord.  After researching extensively, I suspect that MANY people are replacing this cord that could have just tightened a few screws.  I guess it behooves Blue Ox to not suggest maintenance (they sell more cords), but it sure hurts their reliability ratings!  We decided not to seal the cord, as Trimerus suggests, so that we can regularly repeat this procedure and easily tighten the screws.

Later, David decided to check the cord socket on the car, and sure enough, its screws were a bit loose, too.