I picked up a LED tail light for my 2011 Iron because with the turn signals operating as running and brake lights I thought I needed a little more visibility.

Generically this is the light I got.

Nice little kit at a good price.

This is the wiring diagram.


At the rear of the bike there is a separate 3 wire harnesses running to each turn signal. Each harness has a blue, purple and black wire. There is also a 2 wire harness running to the license plate light.

My questions are:
1) Assuming black to each side is ground, which of the blue or purple is the brake light?
2) Once I know which wire is which, I plan to splice the appropriate wire into the right colored wire of one side. That is, splice the brake light wire in the harness to the yellow wire from the new tail light, etc. Is this the correct process?

Thanks in advance for your help.
JTC

 

Won't work. The Brake/Turn wires run through a modulator that make it blink. So your new light will either blink or keep your blinkers from blinking.

 

Interesting thought I hadn't considered. However, the bike is now wired with brake/turn and stop lights in what appears to be a turn signal. What I am hoping to do is tap into the existing brake and tail lights which don't blink.

 

If you have the modulator as said above I'd think splicing in front of it should work for you. Here is a diagram from a different thread that should help with wire colors. http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/ra...khpkt.jpg.html

 

Wrong thread. Deleted.

 

I'm thinking your existing 3 wire ligths are ground / run / brake-turn, so if you tap those, you'll either blink the new light, or back feed to both lights and lose your signals. What do you have for a tail light? go to that.

 

Right now there is no separate tail light, just the two "turn signals" mounted to the fender rails. The new LED light has three wires coming from it. Maybe I should just tap into the main harness to connect to brake and tail lights and leave the turn signals alone?

 

Ok I had to think about this after I got home because I run the modulator on mine but also have an auxiliary light on my license plate. Lights for the plate and a brake light to be clear. Turn signals are run brake and turn and everything works correctly. So the modulator only sends to the turn signal through the turn signal wires. So as long as your auxiliary light only has the brake and run going to it it will work as intended. It would only blink if turn signal wires are run to it

 

He has to go BEFORE the CANBUS/TSM to get the brake signal.

 

How about me just finding the brake light wire and the tail light wire in the main harness and leave the turn signals alone?