Afraid to ride in the dark...
 

My brake light works fine but the tail light doesn't turn on when I start up the bike. I replaced the wiring harness to resolve some other issues hoping it would also fix the taillight but to no avail.
Can anyone tell me what I should be looking at to get this fixed?

Did you check the bulb?

James

The bulbs work since they are the same bulbs the brakes use.

Its a dual filament bulb. Replace it and go from there.

You should replace the bulbs, on filament can burn out leaving the other one.

Look on here for the wiring diagram to find what wire colors to test. There is a bundled of bullet connectors in the tail. Your tail lights are likely unplugged if the bulbs are fine.

We had a customer that rolled in on a Triumph. He said "look at this" and he pulled the brake lever and the headlight came on. He said "I know this is not possible. I looked at the schematic and they two circuits are separate." My boss told hin to go up front and buy a tail light bulb and that we would put it in for him. The trouble was, the tail light filament broke, since it is the lightest of the two filaments, and it fell down onto the brake light filament. When the brake switch was engaged the circuit sent power through the lighting circuit to the headlight.

Jim that is a crazy story. I thought one in a million dilemas only happened to me!

Report back after you check suggested bulb. If you've never seen one they look like this:
http://www.ultimategarage.com/shop/images/bulb7225.jpg

If one of the two burn out, you will loose either bright brake lighting or the dim running light.

Damn that's a big ass bulb!

No, according to Wolverine, that's a suggested bulb.

lol

Thank you for enlightening me! Didn't know about the dual filiment. I'll pull them and take a look.

You're pretty bright to have noticed that.

I know. Blink, and you could miss it. This kind of attention to detail is the filament that runs through everything I do. It gives great illumination to...eh, I'm done. I'm getting burned out on this.

What an illuminating thread!

I already did illumination. Thanks for playing.

Oh missed it, I must have been blinded by the light. It is an incandescent thread though!

Touché. Nice usage.

You guys are really bright.

Wow, Crux, that was funny six hours ago.

I'm aglow with happiness that this thread has went this far.

.

Figured I'd finally update this thread with what I ended up doing with the taillight. I bought one of those ebay led taillights. I just installed a new wiring harness and there was no way I was going to cut it up. I sawed off the piece the bulb goes into and wired it to the new taillight so I could just click it in. Also got some male thingys to wire the turn signals to. It's not as pretty as stock but it's exactly what I wanted to do.

http://booker909.smugmug.com/Bike/i-...1_204357-M.jpg

http://booker909.smugmug.com/Bike/i-...1_203417-M.jpg

http://booker909.smugmug.com/Bike/i-...1_202518-M.jpg

Good job, just hope you weren't riding around invisible all this time! I wouldn't have cut the harness either.