Wiring help for brake light

Hi all, my bike has track plastics and instead of switching everything off to revert to street fairings, I went ahead and purchased a small LED tail light off of ebay. Figured I could pop it on and off as needed.

The wiring is simple, 5 wires. One for running light, brake, left blinker, right, and ground. After everything is hooked up, I test and everything works great, the only issue is that when I flash the brake light, its fine, but when I hold the brake light, the LEDs stop after a second and go out. At that point the CEL comes on as well.

Do you think I need some sort of resistor or something? Maybe the brake wire is too powerful for the LEDs? As you can tell, I'm not the most knowledgeable on wiring.


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add a 390Ohm resistor between Ground and Rear Brake Light signal if your brake light is too weak.
Which light unit did you buy? Link?

Gecko said:

add a 390Ohm resistor between Ground and Rear Brake Light signal if your brake light is too weak.
Which light unit did you buy? Link?

Click to expand...

Thanks! So I want to put the resistor on the ground wire? Not the brake wire? I've attached the link to what i got as well as the budget wiring schematic.



http://m.ebay.com/itm/262979261891?...3De11051.m43.l1123%26rvr_id%3D0&ul_noapp=true


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Nope, between ground and Brake signal, parallel to the tail light.
Easiest way to make sure is if you measure the current needed on the brake line. You need a multimeter for that.

Ebay does only mention 5050 LEDs, 18 LEDs would in average make about 720mW. So you shouldn't get problems. But it's dependent on the units circuitry. If tail brake light power consumption is less than 500mW, you need a parallel load resistor.

Gecko said:

Nope, between ground and Brake signal, parallel to the tail light.
Easiest way to make sure is if you measure the current needed on the brake line. You need a multimeter for that.

Ebay does only mention 5050 LEDs, 18 LEDs would in average make about 720mW. So you shouldn't get problems. But it's dependent on the units circuitry. If tail brake light power consumption is less than 500mW, you need a parallel load resistor.

Click to expand...

Ahhhh, a direct parallel conection. I'll give that a try when I get home, thank you so much!


-Jack

Gecko said:

Nope, between ground and Brake signal, parallel to the tail light.
Easiest way to make sure is if you measure the current needed on the brake line. You need a multimeter for that.

Ebay does only mention 5050 LEDs, 18 LEDs would in average make about 720mW. So you shouldn't get problems. But it's dependent on the units circuitry. If tail brake light power consumption is less than 500mW, you need a parallel load resistor.

Click to expand...

Thanks again Gecko! That resistor worked perfectly

Wiring is a bit sloppy but gets the job done lol




-Jack