XJ11 Brake Light - Always works with ignition off

[Prothec]

On my 82 XJ1100, I found yesterday that my charging system is not working. I parked at the end of my driveway to swap bikes in the garage and went back to start it and it wouldn't start. The battery was mostly dead. I dropped it on the charger for a bit and the bike fired right up.

The quickest thing I could do at the time was check voltage when revving and it isn't moving from the ~12v it starts at.

I'm not too concerned about the charging because I have not done much to troubleshoot at this point, so it could simply be a broken wire from the stator that I previously soldered or a bad job with a connect I added to the regulator recently.

For the hell of it, I pulled the stator cover and took a look at the rotor, stator and brushes. Unfortunately I slipped putting the stator back in the cover and broke one of the brushes (already ordered new ones), so I can't really check much until I get new brushes.

This morning I went to the garage to hook up the float charger and happened to bump my brake lever slipping past the bike in the dark garage and the brake light lit up Ignition is off and the kill switch was off.

I tried the rear brake and no brake light. Is this normal on this bike? Nothing else works with the ignition off. I could have hooked something up wrong when I swapped my cluster, but I'm just letting her sit until the brushes get here. Any thoughts?

[fredintoon]

- - - happened to bump my brake lever slipping past the bike in the dark garage and the brake light lit up Ignition is off and the kill switch was off. - - - I tried the rear brake and no brake light. - - -

Hi Prothec,
the only way a brake light will work with the key off is that Mr. Careless accidentally hot-wired the brake light circuit.

[Prothec]

Just making sure. It sucks being color blind. The reds, greens, and browns all look the same. I will have my wife take a look tonight. I'm sure she will be thrilled to help.

[crazy steve]

I'm not familar with the XJ wiring, but assuming it's more-or-less the same as XS wiring, the front brake light switch should be a green/yellow stripe and brown wires. The brown is the power-in feed, and there should be a switched, fused brown wire in the bucket (fed from the turn signal fuse) just for this. If you have unswitched power, the PO tapped into one of the wires on the ignition switch, probably the red one. If you're colorblind, these would all look the same....

[fredintoon]

Just making sure. It sucks being color blind. The reds, greens, and browns all look the same. I will have my wife take a look tonight. I'm sure she will be thrilled to help.

Hi Ben,
it's good that traffic lights always have the red one at the top, eh? Dontcha just hate those sideways ones?
Got a red-green colorblind friend who copes just fine except he refuses to drive down town once the Christmas lights are up.
And I'd supposed you'd just been coping with the dark innards of your headlight shell instead of finding the trouble light. I did that re-wiring my signals, hooking up the black wire instead of the dark brown one gives the flasher unit a dead short, took me 3 fuse replacements to find out what Mr. Stupid had done.
Interestingly, an electronic flasher clicks at the same rate even if it's shorted out. For 3 clicks, then the fuse blows.

[Prothec]

it's good that traffic lights always have the red one at the top, eh? Dontcha just hate those sideways ones?

Many years ago I was driving the car with my wife in the passenger seat. We were coming up on a flashing light at an intersection and I was going pretty fast.. all I could manage to do was yell "RED OR YELLOW?! RED OR YELLOW?!" Imagine her confusion....

Thanks for the advice!

[crazy steve]

What was that bit in 'Starman'?...
'Red stop, green go, yellow go like hell'....