I have been for many days fruitlessly looking for the troublemaker, who makes all the lights in the car blink. When I turn the engine on, it feels like I am driving a blazing disco. I have cleaned the 3 main ground wires that come from the battery (the ones on the coolant tank, front crossmember and the one on the engine). That seemed to make things better for a while, but then I discovered that the blinking is somehow connected to current battery charge. After I cleaned the contacts and charged the battery there was almost no blinking. Now after s few short drives the lights are driving me mad.

Today I changed my trailer connector and noticed that the ground was not correctly wired. I ran a new wire directly to ground and now the blinking is almost unbearable, but at least the lights on the trailer are now nice and bright and the turn signals work correctly.

My question is that should I be searching for more bad grounds or should I have the voltage regulator checked?

FYI My generator appears to have one of those 4wire connectors with only one gray wire. The other wire is a thick red one on the back of the generator.

 

are the blinking or flickering? there is a difference there, blinking would be on off, on off, flickering would be dimming and coming back to full brightness. I would get the regulator in the alt checked.

 

Make suf all your grounds are good. You have body to engine grounds that can cause all sorts of problems. I put an engine into my truck once and forgot to hook the two firewall to engine straps. That left the single black thin wire on the negative cable to ground the body. Eventually, it got hot enough to melt.

 

Good pointers, but they said they went over all the main grounds.

 

Sorry about the confusion. It is flickering, but it is almost so bad that it could be called blinking. The odd thing is that when the battery is charged then there is almost no flickering. If the battery is almost flat (as it is now) it can already be called blinking. Are there any more certain grounding points that I should check? I´m going to test the voltage regulator today. Engine RPMs don't seem to affect the frequency of the blinking, but it does make it less noticable

 

i would first look into the battery, anything below 12.2 volts (i think) is considered dead, just use a volt meter between + - terminals with engine off... then go from there, with the engine running it should be showing
some where in the 14.5 range, that shows the Alternator is working

 

But once the truck is running, its not running off the battery, so the blinking would be elsewhere.

 

Today I charged the battery and removed the alternator. I discovered that I have a bad bearing in the alternator but it is otherwise good. After I reinstalled it (after a small cleaning, couldn't change the bearing today) and started the car with the recharged battery there was no more flicker. Guess I have to see whether it comes back as the battery drains. However the question about grounding points is still up, because when I turn on the hazards without the engine running my interior lights start flicker in the same rhythm as the hazard lights.

 

swap the battery with a different on if you have the option, the largest variable is the battery, and usually the most problematic when they start failing, have you checked the voltage? and also what Richphoto says is true, sometime the battery can be the culprit

 

Tested with a different battery, no change. By no change I mean no flickering, but I should point out that when I charge the old battery the flickering also stops.