Brake light help

[Guest]

I know there are tons of threads on the issue, and i have been doing lots of advanced searching to try to figure out what is going on. I'm guessing it is something simple that i have just hooked up incorrectly. I have an 80 850 that had a windjammer. I removed that and the bags and had to disconnect the headlight, tail light and signals. when i went to wire everything back up, i was using a diagram i found on here, and all the lights are working except for the fact that the brake light is not working (or is always on... not sure) and the signals do not flash but just switch on. Everything was working fine. Not sure what the deal is.

[Steve]

The brake light is fed by a white wire that comes from the two switches (front and rear).

A test light will tell you rather quickly whether there is any voltage on that wire.

You need to have both signals (front and rear) on both sides of the bike to have them flash.

The best wiring diagram for your bike is THIS ONE, found in our "library", which is otherwise known as "BassCliff's little website".

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[Freeborn]

The brake light is fed by a white wire that comes from the two switches (front and rear).

A test light will tell you rather quickly whether there is any voltage on that wire.

You need to have both signals (front and rear) on both sides of the bike to have them flash.

The best wiring diagram for your bike is THIS ONE, found in our "library", which is otherwise known as "BassCliff's little website".

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Thanks for the response, I appreciate that. I guess I should have been a bit more specific. I got a couple cheap lights as a temp fix until i decide was i actually want (headlight, tail light, and signals). The new lights are LED, and i have read that sometimes the LEDs on older bikes dont play nice. The weird thing is, even when I reconnect the stock tail light, im not getting any break light (although this is with the aftermarket headlight).

[Steve]

Yes, "specific" is usually better.

If your new LED lights are for the turn signals, you will have to change your turn signal flasher to one that is make for LED lights, but it will also involve some re-wiring on the bike. Note that you will also lose your self-cancelling function on the bike. For many, that is not a problem, but if you do want to retain that function, contact posplayr to see if he has his "turn signal mod" ready for production. I have one of the prototypes on my bike and I can tell you that it works quite well.

Be careful buying flasher units from Auto Zone and other stores. Even though they have three terminals, just like your stock flasher, none, I repeat, NONE of them is a "plug-and-play" unit. The third terminal on all the suto parts store units is a ground terminal, your bike does not have a ground wire going to the connector. The stock third wire is connected to the self-cancelling unit that controls whether the flashers work or not.

If it is your brake light that is not working (and it is an LED) use your test light to verify that you actually have proper voltage at the terminals in the brake light socket. Use jumper wires to the battery to verify that the light actually works. I have seen some of these LED replacements that simply don't have enough of a difference between the "tail" and "brake" lights to really notice, so watch carefully when you apply the brakes.

Most of the problems that I have seen with aftermarket lights was a simple mis-interpretation of the instructions or that the instructions were wrong. Verify individual parts of your puzzle, as mentioned above. Make sure the bike is right, by using a known-good test light. Verify that the light is good, by using a known-good battery and jumper wires. If it still does not work, your probelm will be in the socket, where the two systems join.

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