If you're like me then you're always frustrated that car turn signals blink at different rates, but today was my lucky day! I found my Honda's turn signal twin in a Nissan truck! What are the odds? I was just driving to church when I pulled up behind the truck at a red light and put on my signal... and can you believe it?! Our signals blinked in perfect synchronization for over a minute!
So what's the deal with turn signals? Will cars of the same make and model blink at the same rate? Does age have anything to do with it? Does the timing change over the life of the car? What factors affect turn signal speed? The world may never know.
I think it has more to do with the blinker mechanism than anything. Different car companies undoubtedly don't use the same blinker mechanism from the same part supplier.
GM vehicles, for example, may all use the same blinker mechanism... covering vehicles under a lot of different brands. I'm pretty sure, though, that GM and, say, Honda or Toyota don't use the same parts, though. I could be wrong... as the blinker mechanism is a fairly simple thing.
For a much better explanation than what I wrote above, check out this link.
things like overall impedence in the blinker circuit affect matters cos it's a very old fashioned analogue circuit; for example, when one of my bulbs went out, the blink frequency rocketed up quite high for that side of the car
For that reason, I think that examples of the same model will differ, and change over time too, since components of the same lable value are not identical...
On the other hand, all modern cars have microprocessors. It might now be cheaper to run the blinking timings from the chip, in which case similar models should blink at the same rate...
Some blinkers will blink faster when one of the bulbs is out, thus alerting the driver and reminding him constantly to change his bulb all the way to the store where he buys a new one.
Oh sure, get all technical. I'd prefer them to remain a magical mystery.
I know someone who got a ticket for having a blinker that was too fast, according to the cop. No moving violation, just the fast blinker. Now don't tell me that wasn't a quota ticket.
I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who looks for turn signal twins!
As to why they blink at different rates, why wouldn't they? I doubt this is the sort of thing that there's a strict industry standard for. Even within a certain type of blinker part, variances in capacitors and resistors would make any two blinkers go out of sync at some point.
Btw, my husband once tried to convince me that there was a "blinker belt" in the car that controlled this. Being an electrical engineer, I was not convinced.
You can answer your question by answering this one first:
Who would pay extra to have all blinkers operate at the same rate?
lurker: I would. I think we should make a law and a Federal Bureau of Turn Signal Conformity.