Enabling Headlight "Flash to Pass" in 10 Minutes or Less

[patrickt]

Have you ever just wanted to flash your headlights, but without having to turn the Lucas dash switch on and off? You know, just by tapping the little switch on the back of the turn signal stalk so that you can signal somebody with your headlights. Most of our other cars have this ability, and we used to call it "flash to pass" functionality and it was built in to the headlight dimmer switch, but not our ERA cars. So, is it hard to add this nice little touch? Will it require a massive amount of rewiring? Of course not. In fact, only one wire.

The pic below is of the VW signal relay on our ERA cars. ERA wires them so that terminal 30 and terminal 56 are connected. Both terminals are energized when you turn the Lucas dash switch on. If instead you have terminal 30 ALWAYS ENERGIZED and leave terminal 56 to be energized when you turn the Lucas dash switch on, then you will enable the "flash to pass" functionality that is actually built in to the VW relay. The relay is really a beautiful little component; a latching relay with flashing functionality. Wonderful. Now, if you would like to just "test out" what enabling "flash to pass" is like, pull the wire off terminal 56 as you see in my pic, then turn the Lucas switch on as if you were turning the headlights on (the headlights will not be on because you have pulled the feed wire off). You can now test out with the stalk control switch how nice it is to be able to flash your headlights without having to turn on the Lucas dash switch. Just put the wire back on when you're done testing.

To enable FTP permanently, just pull the lead off terminal 30, tape that wire off, and run an always HOT lead to that terminal. That's it. Maybe a 10 minute job. Yep, that's the way it should have been wired to begin with, IMO. But Bob P. did such a wonderful job on the wiring that I can't really complain. So, there's your ten minute upgrade... thank you very much.