I was wiring up the lights on my new-to-me Cozy and there are only two lights. A single filament red light on the rear fender and an amber light on top of the fender. Are these simply tail and marker? Or brake and marker, brake and right turn signal, tail and right turn? What lights are required by law?
I will, obviously, be adding more lights but was anxious to get this rig on the road and we still have a fair amount of dark up here in AK.
Thank you
In a certain respect it doesn't really matter what the law requires. Basically your life could be on the line, at least your continued health, without having good bright Stop Ligts on the rear of your vehicle.
Single filament bulbs are tail or clearance, not combo Stop/Tail or Turn Signal/Clearance. Many auto parts stores now carry replacement bulb socket receptacles, the metal part that bulbs twist into. They can be a little fiddly to change out but if you're reasonably comfortable with tools it's dumb easy. Of course you'd have to run a second wire that's tied in to the stoplight switch or its circuit.
Otherwise you can of course buy whole light assemblies. There's lots of inexpensive trailer light kits out there that include 2 complete stop/turn/tail lights plus some wire and connectors etc. Pretty cheap, depends where you shop but almost all auto parts and many hardware stores carry them.
Changing sockets is the best way to go. I thought this would be a good place to post about another option that we do on one of our sidecars that we use an LED automotive "third" brake light on. We want this LED brake light to also work as a tail light. So by wiring it up using two diodes and a resistor we also run it as a tail light. The resistor is put in the tail light wire so that the LED does not get full voltage. This causes it to not be as bright. Diodes are like check valves, they only allow the voltage to flow one way so by having the diodes in the system we are not back feeding the bike system which would with out the diodes cause the bikes brake lights to be on when ever the tail light is on.
Jay G
DMC sidecars
www.dmcsidecars.com
866-638-1793
Thank you for the replies. I hadn't even thought of changing out the sockets as the stock light is pretty small. The tug has flashing LEDs in addition to the brake lights so they are pretty visible. I just thought it was odd to find a single filament bulb in the tail light. And to add to the confusion, each light had an individual wire run to the strut. I like the idea of the LED light with a resister and diode added to have it function as a tail light as well as a brake and with the addition of an electronic module, the turn signal as well. I had been shopping for a combination tail, brake, turn LED light that mounts with a stud mount. Hard to find but I have seen LED turn signals that I can now use with a little modification.
As far as legality, I just remember hearing that amber clearance lights shouldn't be visible from the rear and tail lights need to be near both rear corners of the vehicle or something like that.
Thank you again
Welcome to the forum Richard!
This may be a complication to your question, but I built a sidecar lighting system from basic components that seems to work pretty well. It uses a "dual intensity" round LED tail/brake light on the car's fender and a single intensity amber LED light strip on the car's nose. With a power relay and a couple diodes, I was able to add turn signal functions to the tail light and make the nose light a marker/turn light too. The schematic below also shows a dual intensity light bar on the car that does NOT act as a turn signal, just tail and brake (the bar is fed from the 6-pin connector while the fender light is fed from the 4-pin). My tug is a Goldwing 1100, so the bike's wiring harness is fairly simple, yet has individual wires with the proper signals.
If this is useful, then GREAT! Otherwise just ignore.
Thank you for the schematic. I ended up trying one of the trailer light converters but was dissatisfied with the appearance of the brake/turn signal. Somehow, the current was being limited by the converter. I ended up tossing the converter, using a dual filament lamp for tail and brake, then added a separate amber turn signal. The amber really stands out to the rear. On the front, I used LED turn and parking lights but left the bulb in the bike turn signal housing on the faring as it is much more visible to forward and side traffic.
And thank you for the welcome. Getting some miles onto the rig now though the tug complained yesterday at -18F. Something else to work out, how to pre-heat an airhead...
