Symptoms: When selecting the right turn signal from the stalk control (or could be left / mine have always been right blinker selection) The blinker sort of wigs out, fast blinks and such. You may hear your relay going nuts clicking. If you press hard on the stalk arm, wiggle it a bit - sometimes the blinker will work fine
Diagnosis: Contacts are stuck and or worn out / grooved but repairable. Grease may have turned nasty / could prevent good contact
How to - Wish I had more detailed photos but this is all I had time for.. Should be cake for any gear head:
I had to do this fix ages ago for my old 4runner so thought I would take some pics for everyone as my 02 started to do the same thing. The repair is simple, takes about 30 minutes tops. Also, the repair should last the life of the car as the issue generally pops up around 175-225K miles. There could already be a writeup on this - did not even look! But if not - hope this helps. This repair applies for most all toyotas in this year range and beyond or even earlier. Most pics below I took in reverse order as I decided to do a writeup AFTER I had already done the work So many will show new / clean grease. Your switch will likely be MUCH dirtier as mine was
Step 1: Take apart steering column clam-shell by removing the bottom phillips screw. Then rotate the wheel and remove two more phillips screws holding the clam into the column. Next, remove the two screws from the blinker stalk and unplug the unit (two screws not shown, already removed them. Will be self explanatory once you open the column up. Then just slide the control out!
Vacant hole where the control once sat:
Step 2:
Excuse the resistor in the pic, has nothing to do with this. Pry the clear plastic cover off the back of the housing
Step 3: Once the back side is exposed, remove the two phillips screws shown. Screws have purple marker on them
Step 4: Use a jewelers screwdriver to gently pry open the housing
Step 5: Lift off the white contact cover
Step 6: Once the cover is lifted, you will see a small contact trolly. Lift that out to expose the contacts
Step 7: Yours will not look this clean. This is after I wiped a considerable amount of black / burnt looking grease out of the contact area. Use q-tips and scrub good with alcohol Notice the center / top copper contact pad has a chunk out of one side. This is the worn out spot partially causing the issue
Step 8: Now pay attention to the contact trolly. Both of my contacts were stuck down / the spring under them was not having any effect. You can see the top contact has a groove through the silver plating into the copper. Also see the round copper spot on each side? The big one mates up with the chunk missing in the above photo
Step 9: Pry up the contacts with a jewelers screwdriver. Pry up gently on each side and they will pop out. Switch the upper and lower contact places and also flip them 180 degrees. This will give the upper contact a brand new surface as the lower will show virtually no use. Also, Both of my contacts were stuck and once pried up, the springs started working again. I removed each spring and stretched it a little bit, cleaned off all the old nasty grease and re-applied with silicone die-electric (spark plug grease / electrical contact grease)
Step 10: Now, lube up the contacts on the other side and slide the trolley back and forth / making sure the springs under the contact are acting like suspension for the trolly. Once you have slid it back and forth a few times, center it in the middle of the control and let the grease stick it / hold it
Step 11: Apply some silicone grease to the bright lights contacts. Just goo it up a little in between each contact. Feel free to clean and lube any other mating contact / plastic contact / moving part while you are in there. Be sure to clean out the old grease and simply use a quality silicone grease. Just an example, I put a little dab of grease on the end of the steering wheel return switch (the part which turns the blinker off automagically when you turn your wheel back straight)
That is it! Enjoy your as new / working blinker. Hopefully this will also help fix a lot of unknown blinker issues I read about as well