Brake Light Wiring

[Narcoleptic_Snowman]

so my brake light hasn't worked since i got my bike (about a month ago) so tonight i figured it was about time to figure out wtf. so i grabbed my handy dandy multimeter. Followed he ground, good. Followed white, Good, Followed brown all the way up to the headlight. Took the headlight out, found brown, and OH HEY! It's not plugged in to anything... O.o So, I Didn't see any other loose connections in there so I'm kinda lost. The bike is a 79 gs750L. If anyone could please help me figure out were this wire's supposed to plug in that would be cool... Thanks!

[salty_monk]

The brown one might be the spare auxillary cable... If I remember correctly the brake switch is an Orange & a white cable.

It's probably the switch assy. New assy including wires is only $15 from Bikebandit or similar so I would just replace it. There is a plate with copper slider contacts that wears out over the years.

Cheers,

Dan

[Narcoleptic_Snowman]

yeah I replaced that. So what's the brown wire that's connected to the brakelight then? there's three wires coming off of the brake light housing, white, black/white, and brown. I was guessing white was for the tail light, as that connects to the ignition coil, black is ground, and the brown just ends up in the headlight, connected to nothing. Unless there's some other connection I missed somewhere that puts the brake switches into the circuit...

[psyguy]

not much help i'm afraid

my setup is like dan said...
so obviously your 750 is different (a few bits changed in 1980 so your different setup may be year-related rather than the cc-related)

[etravis2]

Your brown wire is the parking light. It is connected to the headlight so that when the headlight is on you have a taillight. White wire should be the brake light and the black/white is your ground wire.

[Steve]

Have you checked your fuses? Not sure if your bike is one of the old ones with only one fuse, but if you have multiple fuses like the newer bikes, the brakes, turn signals and horn are powered by the second fuse from the top. If your signals and horn work, then the fuse is OK.

As mentioned before, the brown wire is your tail light feed. Yes, there is an AUX wire in the headlight shell on the same circuit. It can be used to feed running lights in the front signals, if you have the proper signal housings. The white wire is your brake feed, the black wire is ground.

.

[Narcoleptic_Snowman]

hmmmm... so, where do the switches connect to the circuit? Neither of my switches work.... and the fuse is ok, checked that first, and my horn and blinkies work too. Does it just apply more power to the light to make it switch on brighter? so confused -.-

[Narcoleptic_Snowman]

Alright, I found my wiring diagram. So, I think I may have some serious wiring issues... I'm pretty sure that the white for the brake light is wired into the ignition coil... that's cool that I have a aux wire, albeit a strange seeming place to wire it in... I also thought, Perhaps I'm thinking about it wrong, perhaps, the brake light isn't turning OFF. I dunno, I'm at work for the next buncha hours, I'll have to wait to figure this out. Thanks a lot for the replies, any advice is always appreciated.

[Narcoleptic_Snowman]

From the look of the wiring diagram, brown is my constant power. It's connected to green at the the ignition switch, and then green is connected to orange at the lighting switch, orange gets power at the kill switch. So that means, brown's tail, white's brake. That makes ton's more sense. and the not connected to anything wire is the aux. Cool. Can anyone verify this?