This issue has been driving me crazy and been working off and on it for a few months. Reason being is that I live in a different state then where the bike is at. Wondering if someone might be able to solve this issue for me, since I am wanting to sell the bike.

Bike: It is a 2002 Santee Softail with a 2005 113 Ultima, SAS air ride, open belt drive, S&S Super G carb, thunder header exhaust, Thunder Jet. 3500 miles

Issue. Taillight will not come on when the ignition is turned on. The taillight only has a pos and neg coming out of the housing. I have never switched the housing with a different model, so I know this style of light works. When I ground the housing the "brake light comes on". I hit the press on both brake levers and nothing, since it's the brake light and not the taillight that illuminates.

Another issue is that head light only illuminates when it is switch to "Hi Beam", Low Beam and nothing. This has been going on for awhile now. In the past the bike kept burning out the low beam.

History. One night I was riding with some friends and it started to rain, riding with hi beam since low was burnt out. While we were riding, the bike just shut off on me. Pulled over and started to investigate. Noticed that the head lamp was shattered and don't believe anything has struck the lamp to make is shatter, since we were the only ones on the high way. We tried to turn the ignition on and nothing, bike was dead. Batter was good because she hit the air ride and the compressor came on. We hit the ignition and everything came on, minus the head lamp (I don't remember about the taillight). The bike fired right up and we took the back roads home since it was around 1 am and out in the country.

I was out of town and had a buddy install a new head light, same thing, only the hi beam comes on. I am sure the taillight didn't work also because I had the housing off of the bike . But I had him take it down to a mechanic to tune the bike up and change the ignition switch. Bike ran like a champ and new ignition switch has been installed. When I got back into town, I tried to install a taillight/brake light housing. That's when the taillight would not come on and the brake light came on once the housing was grounded to the frame. ** When I hook the housing's neg and pos leads straight to the battery, the taillight illuminates like it should.**

Few things I have done to try and trouble shoot the fault.

- Changed the bulb.
- Changed the brake pressure switch
- Bought another housing to make sure there wasn't a ground issue inside the housing (cant take it apart to check)
- Disconnected the man harness and check for continuity for the front brake lever, taillight, brake pressure switch. Everything checked good.
- Cleaned the grounds, circuit breakers post, leads.
- Made sure the ignition switch was connected correctly.
*Still have the same fault.*

I was using a friends 95-96 softail service manual for schematics. (diagram matches with my bike). See attachment.

Looking through the schematics and I see the hi/lo beam is also tied into the taillight. I assume that there is a issue with the Hi/LO beam housing (in the switch) for the low beam not to work.
- Could that have an affect with the taillight since they are tied in?
- I am to the point to changing out the lights circuit breaker at this point. But the light in the speedo works fine and it's connected to the same breaker, plus the HI beam works.
- I am also thinking about replacing the HI/LO beam switch.

Any suggestions is much appreciated. I am getting burnt out chasing this damn fault/s but I am pretty sure the fix to the LO beam not working is the switch itself.

 

I'm confused which is not hard to do.........you have 2 wires coming out of your taillight and your trying to run 2 circuits - brake & tail ? Yes/No?

So does it take twin filament globes and does it have 2 contacts where the globe goes in?

If it does then those 2 wires are not pos & neg they are brake & tail (both positive/power/active) and you need to supply "negative/earth/ground" to the unit if it cant get it from where it is mounted.

Yes sometimes you need to run a separate neg/earth/ground wire up and attach it to a metal part near where the globe mounts or you will have problems.

This might explain other problems you are having..........bad "negative/earth/ground" signals to your headlight and bars cause all sorts of problems.

 

+1 on Scotty3. Ground the taillight separately and ground the risers to the triple clamp.