TOPIC:

I am having problems with my dime city tail light I just bought. When front light is turned on, no rear running lights are present nor is the license plate light. When I press the front brake, the brake light and license plate light up. The light has three wires, yellow, black and red. looks like yellow is the ground. I have a 1977 kz900 and have 5 wires in the rear but know that three go to the tail light...black/yellow (ground), red (brake), and blue.

Can anybody shed some light, no pun intended, on this?

Here is my DCC light
www.dimecitycycles.com/vintage-cafe-race...ight-225-1005sm.html

Double check but blue is usually the brake with red being the running light on the OEM harness. You could use a test light or a pair of jumpers to the battery to test the functions easier.

Later, Doug

My guess for the DCC would have been:

BLACK - GND

RED - brake

YELLOW- tail,license plate lamp

warning:

Be careful testing LEDs if you don't know the wiring sequence. You can kill an LED with reverse voltage (as little as 10V), even though there is a series resistor to limit current.

When I am not sure, I use a power supply not exceeding 5V to test with and about 5k Ohm resistor in series and check two wires at a time. The LED will glow dimly when forward biased and not glow at all if connected in reverse but 5V is usually low enough that it does no harm.

OK, I will give these a try tonight. Also forgot to mention that my gage cluster lights do not light up anymore as well, does this mean that I may have blown a fuse?

My gauge lights weren't working because I had the blue wire hooked up to the DCC black ground. I switched some wires around...

(DCC tail light) Black is connected to the bikes Black/yellow wire
(DCC tail light) Red is connected to the bikes Blue wire
(DCC tail light) Yellow is connected to the bikes Red wire

Now my gauge lights will work but I am still having the same problems with the tail light. No lights until I press the brake. Yes I have switched the Red and Yellow wires around to check and see if that works and it does not. It did blow a fuse, so I replaced one as well.

The blue wire in for the running lights. The same for the gauge lights. Red/W black is brake. Black/W yellow is ground.
Steve

No matter the orientation of the wires, besides keeping black on black, it makes no difference. I still have no running lights and my fuse will break as soon as I press the front brake. Even with a blown fuse the tail light will light up when I press the brake.

Does this mean I have a short coming from my front brake wires? I'm not the best At this nor do I try to act like I am. If I take my multimeter and leave one end on the negative battery terminal would I start poking around with the other end of the multimeter to try and find where the short is?

Got an email from DCC that their wiring is as follows...
Yellow: ground
Black : running
Red : brake
At this point I have wired as so and blew a fuse. So I must have a short somewhere.

Bama704 wrote: Got an email from DCC that their wiring is as follows...
Yellow: ground
Black : running
Red : brake
At this point I have wired as so and blew a fuse. So I must have a short somewhere.

First thing I would do is take an Ohm meter and check across the wires of the new tail light and make sure that it isn't the "short".

OK...I was looking at the wiring diagram, had my fuse box open, and was reading my Ohms. I put a new fuse in the third slot, for the Tail, and placed the key in the ignition, turned it to on. I then turned the right hand control to Run and the fuse blew. I did not grab the brake at all, so all along when I thought it blew because I grabbed the brake I was wrong.

So tracing everything on the wiring diagram, the third fuse leads me to the dimmer switch and the headlight switch. So I'm confused...looking at the wiring diagram it looks like none of the fuses are connected with the tail lights, so I don't know why it will not illuminate in the "running light" mode. And why do my gauge lights not work when the third "Tail" fuse blows but the second fuse is still working just fine.

forgot to add this picture