Bonneville America Forums Forums Technical Forums General Tech New aftermarket turn signal install

Hey, it has been quite some time since I have been on here. Unfortunately I have been extremely busy. Since electrical work is one of my worst talents, I have a question relating to it:

I bought some aftermarket rear turn signals, the small bullet type from JC Whitney. They have one wire where the stock ones have two. So I plugged the singal wire into the appropriate live wire according to the wire schematic. Then I took a piece of wire, connected it to the ground wire on the bike and to the body of the turn signal. I turn the bike on, hit the signal switch and....the headlight and tail light blink. the appropriate front turn signal blinks and the rear turn signal does not even light up. What am I doing wrong. I assume it is a grounding issue but am not sure how to fix the problem.

Please help.

Thanks,

I am going to hook mine up in the am 1 wire also i will let you know.But you may have to ground the light not to the fender??? I don't know? JIM

It is a grounding issue. What I did was to soulder a ground wire to the ground of the blub socket inside the turn signal. This is the only way to insure you get a good ground on our bikes. In other words turn the turn signal into a 2 wire signal. If you don't want to do that you'll have to make sure the post of the turn signal finds a good ground. You can do this by soldering a ring terminal on to the bikes ground wire and put it over the screw post of the turn signal post. Tighten the nut over the ring terminal. Check the ground with an Ohm meter from the blub base to the frame. Good Luck

Sounds like the wrong wire is grounded. Green/red feeds the left signal, green/blue the right one and the black wires are ground.

So I think I figured out the problem. I took the signals off the bolts on Saturday to check em out. I realized that I threaded the bolt too far into the housing. The wire got pinched between the bolt and peirced the insulation on the wire so the signal was essentially double grounded. So I had to cut the wire and re-splice it together. I won't tighten them so far next time. I will probably connect them tonight to see if they work this time.