LED Brake Lights! (Pictures and Poll!)

[BBS360]

Looks like the PO installed aftermarket signals? Easy to get polarity wrong since it'd work either way with incandescent bulbs.

If you can, swap the wires where they tie into the wiring harness.
If the led bulb works after that it was polarity.
If it's still not working it's probably the damage to the wires.

 

[XS400NJ]

If these are aftermarket signals, please take extra care. I was assuming stock signals where both wires are insulated from ground. If aftermarket signal has one of the wires grounded there is a risk of shorting. Test of polarity with voltmeter much safer.

 

[XS400NJ]

I literally just took a look at it,

so of the two wires, one is solders to the spring that holds the bulb and the other is in the socket. Not gonna lie, i'm afraid to take those apart.

and yes it drives me insane!

I was not suggesting to take anything apart, these wires on the other end are connected under the seat (that is where you can swap them). Under the seat I have a bunch of connectors in a plastic/rubber protective thing. These are simple male/female connectors.
Wire that goes to the spring should be connected to a single wire connector, and wire that goes to the socket should be connected to kind of "cluster" of connectors where all ground wires go. My guess that PO disconnected that signal, and flipped wires when connected it back.

Another test you can do is to take your LED, connect two wires to it, and then connect those wires to socket contacts as if they were flipped (just carefully not to short them). If LED works that way - you know it is polarity ( if led works without flipping - bad contact when LED is inserted).

Got the picture, it should help. The green and black wires are from right back signal. Green is connected to single wire connector, black to a 4-connectors cluster(you can't see in this picture).

 

[jonjkim12]

Going to work on this today.

I'll let you guys know if this fixes it.