Ive got a 2000 F4. Just finished up wiring my integrated tail light. Same way as everyone else does theres in the forum.

Ive got all the wires connected but I only have blinkers and front brake.

I dont have rear brake or running tail light.

What am I missing?

 

Lets start with the stoplight function. Rear brake and front brake are on the same wire, if the input from your front brake is turning the stop lights on, then something is wrong with the wring in or coming out of your rear brake lever.

See here - it should only be about 10" long:


1) first thing to check is find the wire coming out of your rear brake switch and follow it all the way to where it connects to the main wiring harness. Make sure that it is connected securely, and the contacts look good and clean. Unplug it and replug it. Trace that connector in the main harness all the way back and verify that it is uninterrupted back to your taillight.

2) Still no rear brake light: check the spring on the rear brake switch - a) is it there and b) is it pulling hard enough to make the contacts inside the switch light up. Pull down on the rod coming out of the switch (where the spring attaches) and see if that makes the stoplight light up. If not - read #3 below. If so - you can unscrew the switch in the rearset usually to add pre-tension to the spring. Unscrew the switch body til the light comes on without pressing the brake lever, then turn it back in a few rotations until you have the sensitivity you want on the rear brake lever making the light turn on. You don't want it so sensitive that every time you hit a bump the vibration in the rear brake lever makes your light flicker. There needs to be about 1/4 - 3/8" of travel of the pedal needed to make the light turn on.

3) If pulling on the switch assembly doesn't make the light turn on, and the wiring is otherwise cheking out - you need to pull the switch apart and clean up the internal contacts. Luckily I had this prob on my bike, and did a how-to on it when I fixed mine - here ya go: https://cbrforum.com/forum/how-mechanical-40/f2-others-rear-brake-switch-refurb-112450/

If that doesn't fix the rear brake situation - I dunno where to go from there. (Well, I do, but you get into some involved troubleshooting that requires a digital multimeter with a continuity tester. We'll cross that bridge if none of this works)


For the no running lights in the tail - I don't know what your wiring harness coming out of the light looks like, and what connections it requires, but I just downloaded a manual for your bike and checked the wiring schematic. You should have a 3 wire plug in the main harness that would have plugged into the factory taillight - it has a Green, Green/yellow, and Black/Brown wire.

Green is the Ground wire.
Green/Yellow is the Stop light positive lead.
Black/Brown is the running light positive lead.

Edit:I can tell your running light wire is carrying voltage, because it's where the stoplight wire gets its voltage. Stoplights wouldn't light up at all if the running light wire was dead. Sounds like you just don't have the right wire plugged up to your integrated tail.

you can grab a F4 manual here if you don't have one: http://www.stephygee.com/F4manual.zip

 

OK lets see. I tried a few things.

First when I turn the bike on the tail light doesnt turn on.

When I grab the front brake the light turns on, but so does the license plate light so I'm guessing that the light that turns on is supposed to be the running light. It doesnt get any brighter with the brakes.

The rear brake doesnt work when i push on it with my foot, but when I pull on the spring on the switch, it turns the tail light on (and the license plate light).

Additionally, both the front and rear blinkers work fine.

So now I dont know where to go.

Here is the wiring scheme.

The green, green/yellow, and black/brown wires go into the stock clip which goes into the stock bulb housing.

I removed the bulb and put the yellow connector from the integrated tail light into where the bulb used to be. The wires going into the yellow connector are red black and yellow.



I plugged in both blinkers and they work. They blink fast but its ok for now.

 

cool - you're not far off sounds like. I could probably troubleshoot this in 5 minutes if I were there looking at it, but over the web, this may get a little complicated - lemme think it through. I can pretty much tell there's a problem with your wiring harness though due to the license plate light lighting up. Let's tackle that first, and it should fix all the others, or expose their issues. Are you using the stock lic. plate setup? if so, it has a 2 wire plug, and should be Green and Black/Brown going to this. First go thorugh your rear wiring harness and check all the solid green wires. These should be ground wires, and no other color wires should be spliced into them. Since it is lighting up with application of the front brake lever, that means somewhere your Black/Brown is likely spliced into the green/yellow wire incorrectly somewhere. The Green/yellow wire only runs between the front brake lever switch to the rear brake light. the rear brake lever switch connects in at the factory spot in the wiring harness as I showed you in my earlier post.

Ok- you have the stock clip, that pigtails into the factory receptacle that the stock bulb plugs into - in your situation, that yellow plug on your integrated (your pic above) is just simulating a stock lightbulb. This is fine. Looks like a black, red and yellow wire coming out of it. black will be the ground - so it should plug into where the Green wire is in the factory plug. The other 2 are the power leads for the running light and the stop light function of your integrated. Can you plug a stock bulb into the factory socket for a minute and see what lights up when you turn the key on - that stock bulbs have alow wattage filament (the Black/Brown circuit), and a high wattage filament (The Green/Yellow). If that bulb is god awful bright - somewhere in the rewiring, you've gotten the Green/Yellow and Black/Brown swapped.

Any way you can shoot video and upload to youtube, or post a series of pictures - start at the factory harness as far in as you can, before the PO started making a mess of everything, and progress toward the tail showing each wiring junction along the way?

 

Thanks so much for sticking with me through this. You seem very knowledgeable and this is helping a ton. Unfortunately, I cant work on the bike anymore today since I am back at school and the bike is at home. I will check all of the things you told me to though when I can get home next. I cut out all of the mess that the PO made, and I was working with the ten wires that I was familiar with.

3 of the wires (green/green&yellow/black&brown) I know go to the clip that would go to one bulb in the tail light.
3 wires (of the same color) would go to the other clip that would be the other bulb of the tail light.
2 wires (green/ orange) go to one blinker.
2 wires (blue/green) go to the other blinker.

I have 3 black/brown wires. I tried all of them in the clip for the integrated tail and they all seem to bring back the same result. No running light etc.

 

and im not sure if this has anything to do with the tail light, but the high beam on the headlight doesnt work either. I thought it was just because it needed a new bulb but now i have my doubts. just trying to provide any information that i can right now.

 

no worries man, when you get a chance we'll work through it. Gotta be something simple.

lol - downloaded your bike's wiring schematic to my laptop and brought it over to my buddie's house to watch the UFC fight tonight.

On the highbeam-does your hi beam indicator light come on on your cluster? if so, then you prolly just need a new bulb, both the headlamp and the cluster bulb run off the same circuit. The lowbeam is fed off the same power source, so if the low beam comes on, and the hi beam doesnt, either the switch isn't sending power to the bulb and indicator, the bulb is out on the hibeam, or there's a wiring issue. I'm betting its just a bulb tho.

 

Nothing better than a good UFC fight and some wiring diagrams eh? Haha but seriously you're a life saver.

And to answer your question I do believe the high beam indicator comes on the dash so Ill get a new bulb.

This wiring issue is driving me crazy. I concidered going back to the stock tail light lol. But hopefully its just something small. Ill get some pictures and videos posted up as soon as possible. Most likely early in the week. Thanks again.

 

No worries - I was a car stereo/security installer for years, so following automotive wiring diagrams and stuff is something I've got a knack for.

Since I left the fight I kept coming back to thinking about this - and wanted to clarify something - you said:
In that do you mean you have 2 bundles of 3 wires (Bl/Br, Gr/Yel, G) each that a stock brakelight bulb would plug into, plus another 2 wire combo (Bl/Br, G) for the license plate light, each pigtail for the blinkers (G/Or, G/Blue)

And on top of that there are 3 more Black/Br wires? Where do they come from?

I'm looking at this mess here:


In the lower left, I see what looks like a blue tape or heatshrink patch, I also see the 2 wires that appear to be Black and a green that turn into a black and a red and run into the hole drilled in the light housing.

Man there's a lotta nasty going on there.

We'll get it figured out.

 

So I had been thinking about this a lot too, and let's see if I can clarify(I will get pictures up Tuesday when I go home).

All that mess in the pictures is gone. I cut everything out before the mess starts so now I have 12 wires with nothing on the end. The wires are as follows:
2 sets of green,green/yellow,black/brown (6)
Green/orange blinker (2)
Green/blue blinker (2)
One more black/brown wire that I would imagine goes to the license plate bulb.