Morris Minor Owners Club

Has anyone tried to refurbish an indicator stalk?

Mine works ok sort of. Perfectly turning left and usually ok for turning right if you hold it down and pull slightly. Switch cleaner has made it better but not 100%

There seems to be a lot of fore-aft play (like dipped beam on a normal car) and I’m wondering if this can be adjusted out?

Haven’t taken it off yet for a look inside but thought I’d ask if anything can be done.

Thanks

well I can report it all came off and apart with minimal fuss. As suspected dirty contacts found and cleaned. Refitting I expected to be straightforward but it wasn't! getting the slip ring to line up without the horn going off proved difficult and I've still mis-aligned the self cancelling screw. Works consistently now though.

Make that ‘worked ok’. Hit and miss again now when turning right and the self cancelling is still not right.

Harrumphhhh

Is grumpy2 the son of Grumpy21? Or is there another relationship between these posters?

Split personality?

Don’t really know. Both work for me! Seem to be G2 on my phone and G21 everywhere else! Mystery

That’s better, phew.

Resurrecting a thread but it isn't that old.

Like the OP I wondered whether my indicator stalk assembly could be overhauled rather than replaced. The self-cancelling has not worked in many years, so long in fact that I did not realise that the indicators were supposed to self-cancel.

I removed the old indicator assembly and found that the grease had turned to a kind of glue/varnish. With the assembly in my hand I tested whether the self cancel cam would cancel when pushed with my finger. It would try but the old grease prevented it from working properly. I decided it was better to replace the whole assembly because it was very worn and the all the chrome was pitted on the stalk which was also rusty and not pleasant to operate on the hand.

The new Lucas branded assembly has a wiring colour code that does not exactly match the old one. I managed to connect 5/7 wires first time and then it was just a question of transposing the 2 incorrect ones. Ensuring the self-cancel works correctly is done by adjusting the height of the steering column outer sleeve slightly to ensure the mushroom-shaped protuberance (or whatever it is called) on the steering column is correctly aligned with the self-cancelling cam in the indicator assembly. A bit of grease on the cam and the steering column cam-activator thing should reduce wear. The shoe/brush that contacts the sleeve on the steering column did need a bit of bending to contact at all. Before I fully re-assemble tomorrow I will test the resistance to ensure this contact is good. One slightly annoying thing is that the tell-tale lamp on the end of the indicator stalk has a lens that is not the correct shade of green. It's too pale. A small thing but it irritates me. All I have to do is take the lens off the old one and swap it.

Old (left) vs New (right) indicator stalk lenses. You'd think they'd get this correct.......Obviously I swapped the lenses over. I snipped the wires off the worn out stalk too. Might come in handy for a repair one day.