Rear Running Lights
Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2016 3:12 am
Have you noticed how cars run right up on your while riding on dark roads? I figured it out a while ago that they can not judge the distance from the bike with one silly little light in the middle of a dark night. On my last few bikes I bought a set of front turn signals and wired them into the rear so that I could have running lights on the back as well. Problem with that is I was spending around $50 to buy a used set of front turn signals and you were stuck with OEM lights. There are very few aftermarket 3 wire lights out there.
This time I used a trailer light converter box. I got mine at Canadian Tire for around $15.00 and there are several choices out there. Now the rear turn signals are always on and flash off when you hit the button. It has the same effect, but a whole lot cheaper and now you can buy any lights you want. I know there are adapters you can buy for bikes, but they all seem to be very expensive to do the same thing.
On the car side of the box, I spiced in ground to ground, left turn signal to left turn signal hot, same with the right, and the stop wire to a constantly hot wire (in this case the rear running light for the brake / running light). On the trailer side, I wired the ground to the 2 turn signals ground or negative wires and left to left & right to right. I cut off the tail light wires on the box and capped them off.
In order to make sure I was legal I bought clear lenses and red bulbs so the running lights are red and compliant with most provinces / states.
Works really well and saved me $40 bucks over the way I used to do it and I can change out my signals to any 2 wire signals I want if the fancy strikes me.
This time I used a trailer light converter box. I got mine at Canadian Tire for around $15.00 and there are several choices out there. Now the rear turn signals are always on and flash off when you hit the button. It has the same effect, but a whole lot cheaper and now you can buy any lights you want. I know there are adapters you can buy for bikes, but they all seem to be very expensive to do the same thing.
On the car side of the box, I spiced in ground to ground, left turn signal to left turn signal hot, same with the right, and the stop wire to a constantly hot wire (in this case the rear running light for the brake / running light). On the trailer side, I wired the ground to the 2 turn signals ground or negative wires and left to left & right to right. I cut off the tail light wires on the box and capped them off.
In order to make sure I was legal I bought clear lenses and red bulbs so the running lights are red and compliant with most provinces / states.
Works really well and saved me $40 bucks over the way I used to do it and I can change out my signals to any 2 wire signals I want if the fancy strikes me.