Les
You have to back and read my many posts in this thread. I have covered how to trace a short, and have mentioned that right now you may only have a bad flasher, or you may have a bad flasher because of a short. The short would be traced by removing the large connector at the signal controller, and then checking for resistance (ohms reading) between the 4 main wires (460, 461, 460-22 and 461-22) to see what readings you get. If all are similar (which they should be because they are all going through a similar bulb) then they are OK. But if one or more read much much lower resistance ( zero resistance indicating a perfect ground) then you know which wire was the problem. Note your problem may be intermittent....you may have to have someone wiggle the wires to find the problem.
So as to your new question: Yes, you can burn out the flasher with just one single wire shorted to ground. Let's pretend there was a ground in the wire leading to the left rear turn signal. Every time you applied the right signal, you would be subjecting the flasher to up to 25 amps of current. At the same time, everytime you applied the brake, you would be causing the little points inside the controller to 25 amps of current. Neither component will put up with that for very long.
All that said, your problem may still be just a bad flasher. An exposed wire is not necessarily a short to ground...it has to touch ground.
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