My front brake switch does not work I am thinking of just switching to a pressure switch that works via banjo bolt. I dont know the pitch for an 1987. Also on the stock switch I tried touching the wires together to see if it would light up the bulb and it wouldnt. I have no idea how to fix that if it is a wiring issue. I was thinking of just putting 2 4in led strips in the brake light housing and wiring it to a new pressure switch but I dont think that will be bright enough in the day time.

Yes it does

quentin99 those wires in the front brake switch are itty bitty, especially at the switch, it takes not much wiggling of them to break them and when you go working on them you need a real light touch, something I am not blessed with. I'm with Dave, you probably have a short somewhere, good luck in tracing it out.

Yeah they are still soldered on and a little bit of the wire is exposed on both ends. So I touched a piece of copper wire to both exposed ends and nothing. Im looking at the wiring diagram and the side stand relay is what the brake light switch wires into. And from there it wires to the horn which works, the neutral indicator which dosent work and the turn signals. Which in my opinion blink a little slow. I checked all of the connectors the other day that had to deal with the brake light switch and they all seemed tight.
The bulb in the tail light which i believe to be an original to the bike. Looks like it is a 3 filament bulb? It is set up like a 2 filament bulb but one of them has a post in the middle of it. I tried replacing it with the dual filament bulb that the blinkers use and that did not fix the problem.

quentin99 wrote on 05/16/14 at 13:01:08:



The black wire with the white dashes that is common to the horn, turn signals, side stand switch, etc.....is the common ground wire.  If you follow that black/white wire long enough in the circuit....you will see that it goes to the negative side of the battery.  The power to the turn signals comes from the colored wires, and unfortunately one of them is black which makes it easy to forget that it is a power wire....and not a ground.

The bulb is a 2 filament bulb.  The short filament is the running light and is something like 5 watts.  The long filament is the brake light and is something like 23 watts, and it has a center support to make it more durable....the support is not grounded and only provides support to the filament to keep it from wiggling and breaking.

For a 1987 bike the wiring diagram shows you should have a white wire with black stripes that goes back to the brake light.  Run a jumper wire from the positive terminal and connect it there.....and if the circuit is good the brake light should come on.  Then you can test the orange wire at the front brake switch to see if you have 12V positve power when the key is turned on.