Directional signal switches

I'm wondering if anyone knows where these, or parts for them, such as cancel cams, can be found. Ames sells some, but not even close to our year. I'm just finishing wiring up the beast-I used a generic harness freom Rebel and it worked great and was surprisingly fun to do-however the signals dont cancel, only one side works (sort of) and thus the brake lights dont work. All power has been confirmed to the column and leaving the column, which makes me think its a trainwreck under the steering wheel!
Any help directing me to parts is much appreciated!!

Mark

By the way, whys it been so quiet around here lately!!

Mark.....You are correct. the cancel part is under the steering wheel. You need a wheel puller to get it off, but then you can see, and slowly remove the various small parts for the horn and signals. If you do this, you can determine which part/parts are broken. Do it carefully as they come apart and go back together in a certain sequence. The electrical part is not in the column, but on the column below the dash. A rod runs through the column and activates the switch. When you find this switch (rarely) on E-Bay they usually bid up well over $100. Fortunately they are simple, and can be dissembled, cleaned and repaired. CAUTION.....Take the switch out of the car and carefully take it apart at the kitchen table with a large pan underneath. It has several small springs and tiny ball bearings inside. Someone in the electrical section posted about it before. Keep posting with your progress, and we'll try to help......John

Aggh! Sounds daunting, but I'll give it a try-I'm sure this is the problem, so I'll give it a try this week. What could possibly go wrong!

Success in the self cancelling department! All it took was, as usual, abit of disassembly, cleaning and oiling. The signal unit at the bottom of the column on the other hand I was not so fortunate with. Evidently the car has been owned by frequent signallers- the internals were well worn and a little bent! My part says DR3-56 on it. Wondering if anyone might have an extra floating around? Maybe, say, an NOS unit kicking around you'd be willing to part with??

Boy, patience is a virtue when it comes to restoring these vehicles! Other than this, the wiring is now perfect.

markymark.....With all that you've accomplished so far on that car, I'm sure you have the patience, perseverence, and skill to not let that little switch beat you. If it's all there (contacts, bearings, and springs,) you can fix it. Remember, someone put it together originally!.....John

Got it-I swear I have the cleanest directional switch of anyone on this forum!

markymark.....Glad to see that it worked out. A little tedious but I knew you could do it. How did the pins on the switch match up with the connector on the universal harness, and on the other switches (ignition, lights, wipers, etc,?).....John

Oh, everything that way matched up great-I really enjoyed doing the electrical, and my original main harness turned out to be a semi-fried mess, and very brittle to boot. I did also have to go to a Chev headlight switch to make it work with the new fuse box, but between the rebel wire legend and a pontiac wiring diagram I bought for fifteen bucks on ebay (color laminated to boot) the whole project cost me maybe $400.00 total with all the extra ends, bulbs, crimpers, etc associated with the job. If you're doing a big dollar restoration, this is certainly not the route to go-the wire colors, fuse box, etc are all different from original, but for what I'm doing its just good to know Ive got solid wires running through the car.

It is time for a breather however-getting the seats reupholstered is not cheap-time to get all the loose ends tied up on the car and clean up the shop!

Can you tell us more about the wiring harness you used? I need to rewire mine bad. Everytime I mess with the car something else doesn't work...

Sure! I think the reason the system worked so well for me is that I dont really care if anything stays factory looking-I just wanted to clean it up and unearth the mass of burnt out wires and cigarette paper lined fuses. The kit was their basic, meaning 9 fuses plus 3 extra. It came with the fuse box, so basically I tore out the old one and after organising the new one into rear, engine, and underdash, I mounted the new one, and one by one hooked up the new wires. My basic approach was if I can hook up one wire, why couldnt I do 100 of them! I chose to reuse all my ends, just clean them up, so I don't know whether it wouldve been hard to access new ones or not. Little things like hot/cold temp. (vs the normal one wire idiot light) I had to do myself. Probably the biggest difference in using a generic system is that pontiac headlight switches are partially routed through the fuse box, and it made the install alot easier to go to a chevy headlight switch (which I needed a new one of anyway) but which also gave me a dome switch on the headlight switch which I dont think I had before. Just take a look at a wiring diagram-youll see what I mean.
If you have loads of dough, I think it was Ames or somebody that had you send your fuse box to them and they send you a completely new plug and play harness for $800 or so- not in my lifetime though I know that wouldve been a hell of alot easier.
The one other nice thing about RebelWire was that they were easy to get ahold of, always emailed back in a day, and would always encourage me to phone them (the owner) to figure things out, though I never did.
I think I used about 1000 zap straps!
Hope it helps-I'm off to clean up the aftermath of this all now!

What did you end up paying for it? I assume 9 fuses was enough?

I've got to do something

Ballpark $150 (cant remember exactly), plus extra wire, plus whatever other odds and ends were needed-totalled about 3 to 4 hundred when totally finished as I needed a headlight switch too. Check out RebelWire-theyre in the Hambodex on JalopyJournal.

Ok I'll check them out. Thanks