I have a 2006 3500 single wheel with 30,000 km(19,000mi). I narrowly escaped a serious accident yesterday. I was turning left from a busy road and was being followed too closely by a fully loaded rig carrying steel coils. I put on my signal and began to slow down to allow the approaching traffic to clear before I continued to turn left. I watched the rig come up on me quickly and I realized he was not slowing down and was beginning to veer into the oncoming traffic lane. It was then that I noticed that although I had on my left turn signal the right turn signal was activated. Obviously the trucker thought I was turning right and was beginning to overtake me on my left figuring I would be, at any second, getting out of his way. If I was not watching my rear view and whipped the truck to the right out of his way, he would have smashed me into oncoming traffic and or put the rig into oncoming traffic. The horrifying scream of tires and the sight of the rig in my rear view took a long while to leave my thoughts.
After I put my heart back in my chest and cleaned my shorts I called the dealer and said I would be right in. They were really good about it and showed genuine concern. The parts advisor informed me that the engineers in the Detroit area were looking for a 2006 Ram that had recently experienced this problem. Obviously they (Chrysler) are getting reports from others that this is happening. The part is back ordered which also indicates that this may be a problem which is happening all over the place.
It blows my mind that the design of the multifunction switch would allow in any circumstance the signal to cross and cause the opposite signal to work.
Symptoms happened a week before hand were an erratic timing of the signal and a quick flash of the opposite signal light. At the time that it happened before I thought I was dreaming. I contacted the dealer right away and they began the order process on the multifunction switch. It never happened again after that until yesterday.

If you have any suspicions that this has happened to you for your own and others safety get into the dealer and demand that they fix this potentially deadly problem. I am suspecting that we will hear about a recall very shortly.

I sure would like to be able to explain to that trucker what had happened. Hopefully he will keep his distance from now on.

Oh yeah...live 'er up....you just never know...
Cheers
Bob

 

wow. that could have sucked big time.
glad to hear that DC is trying to fix it.

 

Thanks for the heads up on this...glad to hear all's okay.

--Eric

 

Similar thing happened to me in traffic, but not as immediately grave as yours. This is definitely a serious concern...mine acted up for a bit before it starting crossing sides as well.

 

There's been a few posts lately on this topic. I'm on my 4th switch. Other symptoms (more annoying than dangerous) are high beams not switching both to and from, windshield washer activating when high beam switch pulled, signals not working at all, and wipers not working at all. My problems were sometimes fixed (temporarily) by playing with the steering wheel tilt.

 

I have had this happen several times with mine as well. (2006 2500 QC). I am trying to figure out if this has anything to do with rain. I seem to notice a relationship with the signal and recent rains. Hmmmmm

 

Could be..It was raining on and off before this happened. The switch was very oily (heat melted the lube from electrical short??) when it was removed. My suspicion is a poorly designed contact plate that is too closely placed to the opposite circuit.

Get it fixed though. It will catch you off guard.

 

My 05 does it too on occasion. I was changing into the center lane from the far right lane, but it had me turning right to get off an exit. I wonder since mine is past the 36month warranty, they're even worried about just liability.

 

I noticed you guys all have recent model trucks. Has anyone had this problem on a pre-05 truck?

 

I had this problem on my 03 about 3 yrs. ago going to the off ramp to go to Jersey City. I noticed that although I was signaling for a right lane change the arrow on the dash said I was signaling left. I drive with the wheel tilted down and when I raised it a bit the signal started working OK. when I got to where I was going (Lincoln Park Marina) I disconnected the batteries and took a look at the wiring coming from the steering column. There is a ribbon of several wires and the radius that they had to bend around when you tilted the wheel was to tight I carefully seperated and taped each wire and pulled more wire so that the radius would be bigger and I have had no trouble since. Make sure that if you do this that the batteries are disconnected as you do not want to set off the air bags. This happened to me over 80,000 Kilometers ago (50,000 miles) and I have had no problems since. The original radius that the wires bent around was about 1 inch, I increased that to about 3 to 4 inches. If I had missed my off ramp I would have had to drive the Holland tunnel into New York and I did not know what trouble I would be in with a fifth wheel trailer (propane bottles) and I would have felt like the dumbest Canadian in North America.
Jim O

 

I would urge anyone who has had this issue or any other abnormal safety issue to contact the Government and file a formal complaint so that a recall could be issued if there are enough complaints.

It is an easy only application for the complaint, For the USA the web address is here:

http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/ivoq/index.cfm

In Canada the web address is:

http://www.tc.gc.ca/roadsafety/tp/tp2822/page4_e.htm


Basically if no one complains then there is no investigation and therefore no recall. Enough people complain of the same safety related problem then they perform an investigation and if deemed a safety issue FORCE the manufacturer to fix the safety issue (hence recall status).

 

Thanks Jim. I will check mine out this weekend.

 

Had the same symptoms with mine. Bought a new switch ($55) but decided I wanted to examine the old one first to see if there was a fix. Took it all apart and the only thing I could tell is that there was no grease on the harness plug (thinking maybe a bad connection was crossing signals). Put some dielectric grease on it and its worked fine for a couple months now. Hope its that simple.

 

I have 2002 doge ram with the same problem also with the head light from brite to dim..

 

I think mine is starting to do it. Was sitting at a light this morning waiting to go left, tick tick tick, then I heard a short tick then tick tick tick. Looked at my gauges and my right turn would flash for a split second then go back to left. Is this what you're talking about?