Brake/tail light woes of a noob

[hlewis1110]

So I'm having what seems to be a common issue with a Lucas style light (not LED) and after flipping through many threads, I can't find the fix to my particular problem. Hopefully someone here can help me with the voodoo electrical magic before I put away my pride and take my bike to a shop

The stock harness on my SR500 has three wires: ground, running tail light and brake light. The new light only has two, running and brake. I ran a ground from one of the mounting bolts to the ground in the bike's harness and plugged the other two wires in. One configuration I get brake lights only and the other configuration I get a steady tail light only. I plugged the stock light back in to see if I had blown something and the stock light works just fine.

The only thing I can think of is the mounting bolt is a bad ground? The Lucas light came with a box of parts when I bought the bike, so I'm not sure where it's from but the housing looks like chromed plastic or aluminum at best. If a bad ground could even cause this "one light or the other light" issue, where would I ground to if everything is aluminum/plastic? The light bulb socket directly like my stock light?

Any help would be hugely appreciated!

 

[vandito.cb]

So I'm having what seems to be a common issue with a Lucas style light (not LED) and after flipping through many threads, I can't find the fix to my particular problem. Hopefully someone here can help me with the voodoo electrical magic before I put away my pride and take my bike to a shop

The stock harness on my SR500 has three wires: ground, running tail light and brake light. The new light only has two, running and brake. I ran a ground from one of the mounting bolts to the ground in the bike's harness and plugged the other two wires in. One configuration I get brake lights only and the other configuration I get a steady tail light only. I plugged the stock light back in to see if I had blown something and the stock light works just fine.

The only thing I can think of is the mounting bolt is a bad ground? The Lucas light came with a box of parts when I bought the bike, so I'm not sure where it's from but the housing looks like chromed plastic or aluminum at best. If a bad ground could even cause this "one light or the other light" issue, where would I ground to if everything is aluminum/plastic? The light bulb socket directly like my stock light?

Any help would be hugely appreciated!

some of those tail lights are indeed self grounding. do you have a link to it?

i suggest getting your hands on a multimeter, doesn't need to be fancy either. they come in handy for situations like this when checking for continuity, voltage, etc.

 

[Flugtechnik]

Post a picture of the socket in the light. What does the socket attach to in the light? The main "tubular" part of the socket is the ground. The two contacts at the bottom are the two different positives for the two filaments in the bulb.