Long story longer. The woman called me about 4 days ago at work saying the blinkers were freaking out on her '01 Sentra. They weren't double timing like they had a broken bulb, but had a random flash interval. How exciting.

So yesterday she takes it to our local dealer, who didn't have any flasher units in stock. She then took the car to another dealer who tried the lights, and they worked fine. Then the service tech asked for her cell phone. He plugged it into the adapter, and then into the 12v port. Sure enough, the blinkers freaked the hell out. He said he's seen it happen before.

When I got home from work, I tried my phone and her adapter (they're both Nokia phones). Sure enough, the blinkers went akimbo. If I tried her phone and my adapter, all was well, so we were off to Radio Quack for another adapter. Just for giggles, I tried her phone and adapter in my '03 Max and the same thing happened with the blinkers.

That is definately the strangest damn thing I've ever seen.

As for the adapter, it's a generic brand Part# PI-NK3360-PI, with a special tag that says "Dynamic IC Chip Inside". It's the same adapter I see all the time at Sprint/Nokia phone booths and counters. Whatever the hell that is, it's just plane goofy.

SO, the next time your blinkers go crazy, it may be something other than the car. :-)

 

wow that is freaky
Is the adapter taking too much juice or is overcharging the system or something to do that?

 

WTF?! as an electrical engineer, that simply baffles me!

I'm assuming the blinkers in our cars are still the old school bimetallic type, or is it done by an IC?
If it's got an IC in it, then I might be able to understand it, but it still *shouldn't* be happening.

 

If I had a car charger for my nokia, I'd try it. Thats weird.