Whenever I have my tourpack disconnected from my 89 EG, my turn signals will shut off with the front brakes. When the tourpack is on, they work fine. Anyone ever experience this before or have any ideas?

 

That's kind of a new one on me. When you say "shut off," what exactly do you mean? Do they stop blinking but remain on, or does the bulb go out completely? Does the brake light come on? What about when you press the rear brake pedal? On your bike, does the tour pack have any brake or turn signals? Mine only has running lights.

 

They just stop blinking and go back to being running lights. Basically the same as if I pressed the turn signal button again to cancel the signal. Brake light goes on fine. If I am holding the brake lever and press the turn signal, they will blink until I let go of the brake lever. They work fine with the rear brake pedal. The tourpack has running lights, not positive of brake or turn signals but I do not believe so.

 

Do you have a factory or an aftermarket turn signal control unit? This does not sound like the old style thermal breaker that I have. I suspect an aftermarket control unit that is somehow adding in the tour pack lights. I have seen reference to some of them like that. Try hooking up the tour pack and look at the lights while playing with both brake levers and the turn signals. See if the tour pack lights go with the brakes and/or turn signals. There could also be some kind of "multiplexer" gizmo buried in the harness towards the back, or under a cover or in front of the rear fender or under the seat. Those used to be sold to add in the turn signal lights when you brake, and to add in tour pack lights when you brake.

 

The turn signals were one of the things repaired during my last tune up earlier this year so perhaps that is it. The bike also had an extra brake light bar in the back so maybe there are some gizmos back there. Sounds like this may be a bit of work to find.

 

This may be a terrible idea or just a way of getting myself out of chasing a gremlin but would adding some resistors to the tourpack pigtail work?

 

Might. Depends on what the cause is. If it is an aftermarket box somewhere in there, faking it out with some resistors might do the trick. Measure the DC resistance of the tour pack lights. Pick a resistor that matches. One higher may work too, but you would have to experiment. Wattage is going to depend on the resistor size you use. Too small of a wattage rating means it will burn up the resistor, and one of those things catching on fire would be bad. A 12 ohm resistor at 12V would dissipate 12 Watts. If you used a 5 Watt resistor, you have a fire hazard. 15 watts, OK, but that's a big resistor. One of the LED conversion resistors ("Equalizers") would probably work.

 

Well anytime I have the option of not setting myself or my bike on fire I will choose not to. If you think an equalizer would work, do you have a link to one you might suggest? If not no worries, I will continue to try and do my due diligence.

 

No idea on which equalizer, really. If there is one you could try at an aftermarket shop, you might see if it works, otherwise those things are usually not cheap either, especially to just try as an experiment.

If it was in front of me, I could diagnose it for you. Bring it on over with a 6 pack and we'll get it figured out, otherwise, it's all guessing at this point.

Measure the resistance of the lighting circuit on the tourpack and we can go from there.

 

.005 with the ohm set to 2k.