How to Determine your Motorcycle Brake Light, Tail Light, and Turn Signal Wires

Installing an AdMore Lighting product on your motorcycle or scooter is fairly easy and most of our customers do the installation themselves.  We often say “if you have a tool kit and patience you can do it!”. There is nothing difficult about the installation – particularly if you know which wires to tap. But how do you know which wires to tap?  Here are the common ways to figure it out:

    • Refer to a shop manual for your specific bike
    • Check on forums
    • Use a multi-meter
    • Send a request to AdMore Lighting (we keep a database of wire colors for hundreds of bikes including nearly all makes and many models and years of bikes)
    • Refer to the general motorcycle make wire colors below
    • Process of elimination technique (more details below)

Below, you can find general wire color information for most popular makes of motorcycles:

The Process of Elimination Technique

  1. Determine the color of the Ground wires on your bike (this will be the most common wire color that you see on your bike – you will find this wire color at every bulb and electrical accessory on your bike)
  2. The left turn signal (Positive) wire will be the other wire color going to your left signal bulb
  3. The right turn signal (Positive) wire will be the other wire color going to your right signal bulb
  4. There are generally 3 wires going into the tail section (one is Tail, one is Brake and the third is the Ground wire). You have a 50/50 chance of guessing which wire is Tail and which is Brake. If you guess right the first time, your light kit will work as expected. If you guess wrong, the tail light function on your light kit will not work and the turn signals will only work when you apply the brakes. This is your clue that you guessed wrong (don’t buy a lottery ticket today!). Simply flip these two wire connections around and you will be all set!