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49L top box brake light issue/question


scooter tramp

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scooter tramp

New to the forum and just went from a '14 K16GT to a '14 R12RTW.....my 1st RT. So far a happy move. I was able to keep my top box from the GT. I added the LED aux brake light kit to the box and when on the GT, the light worked both as running light and brake light. When mounted on the RTW, the brake light works as it should, but no running light. Before I dig into this, has anyone encountered the same and can spare me the pain? Do I have an issue? Or the RTW not set up to handle this. There is an extra pin on the top box pigtail connector, but no matching pin on the socket from the RTW, which I think..... may be the answer.

 

Appreciate any help or thoughts.....

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I used the Skene 160 controller (replaced by the 260) to allow the OEM top case brake light to operate as a running light on my 2014 RT, and programmed it to flash four times upon braking. The water cooled RT's need to have the power tapped into the Red-Brown wire behind the drivers seat, not the red wire going to the harness itself. Don't know why the RT is different than the GT.

http://www.skenedesign.com/lights/IQ_260.shtml

 

Or the Clearwater canopener, while pricier, does the same thing and has real nice led light options.

https://clearwaterlights.com/

 

I think there is a new stand alone canopener product but could not find it...

 

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I don't believe that BMW has a running light in the wiring setup for the RT. Seems everyone, including me, has opted to use some type of aftermarket lights or controller for running lights and brake lights.

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FWIW. I purchased the 49L top box with OEM lighting option on my 2015 RTW. The light on the top box only functions as a brake light. I would say there is nothing wrong with your GT top box set-up on RTW. So it seems to get a running light function it would be through an addition modification.

 

Why did they do this? Dono. But the third party accessory guys thank BMW for the omission

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FYI if you run a Clearwater CanOpener with a Billie Brake Light, you can configure it to run the topbox LED as a running AND brake light. Far, far less of a pain than trying to modify wiring / lighting within the box itself. I run that setup myself. https://clearwaterlights.com/collections/all-products/products/billie-brake-light

 

-MKL

Edited by moshe_levy
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scooter tramp

Appreciate all the info.....

 

I have both the Skene and the Canopener from my GT....but the canopener is the 4. RTW appears to require the 3. I will talk with Clearwater to confirm.

 

Also wanna look into the Hex ezcan. Looks to be a pretty simple way for a few add ons. http://hexezcan.com/

 

 

 

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Call Clearwater. I'm fairly certain the CANopener should work and if you have the Billie, you're good to go. It's a simple wiring issue which is detailed in the manual.

 

-MKL

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Call Clearwater. I'm fairly certain the CANopener should work and if you have the Billie, you're good to go. It's a simple wiring issue which is detailed in the manual.

 

-MKL

Actually.....you don't need to have the Billie! The brake light control is built into the Canopener as standard feature. I have mine wired up to the top-box aux. LED and it is operating as running light as well as being programmable brake light. Another tip is that, you just need to cut and splice a single wire of the RT's harness to make the connection. I don't recall the wire colors for the aux. LED, but I can look it up later if anyone wants to know. The key thing is that you can leave the ground (-ve) wire alone, and just cut the +ve wire to splice to the conductor from the Canopener module. Do your cut/splice on the bike-side of the connectors, so that the top-box can be removed easily! BTW, you can wire any LED to the brake output of the Canopener, BUT do note that it has a 1 amp limitation, which is more than enough for the top-box LED.

Edited by PadG
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Actually.....you don't need to have the Billie! The brake light control is built into the Canopener as standard feature. I have mine wired up to the top-box aux. LED and it is operating as running light as well as being programmable brake light. Another tip is that, you just need to cut and splice a single wire of the RT's harness to make the connection. I don't recall the wire colors for the aux. LED, but I can look it up later if anyone wants to know. The key thing is that you can leave the ground (-ve) wire alone, and just cut the +ve wire to splice to the conductor from the Canopener module. Do your cut/splice on the bike-side of the connectors, so that the top-box can be removed easily! BTW, you can wire any LED to the brake output of the Canopener, BUT do note that it has a 1 amp limitation, which is more than enough for the top-box LED.

 

PadG: I'd like to know. Sounds like a good little project for this weekend.

 

Edited by narcosis
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Actually.....you don't need to have the Billie! The brake light control is built into the Canopener as standard feature. I have mine wired up to the top-box aux. LED and it is operating as running light as well as being programmable brake light. Another tip is that, you just need to cut and splice a single wire of the RT's harness to make the connection. I don't recall the wire colors for the aux. LED, but I can look it up later if anyone wants to know. The key thing is that you can leave the ground (-ve) wire alone, and just cut the +ve wire to splice to the conductor from the Canopener module. Do your cut/splice on the bike-side of the connectors, so that the top-box can be removed easily! BTW, you can wire any LED to the brake output of the Canopener, BUT do note that it has a 1 amp limitation, which is more than enough for the top-box LED.

 

PadG: I'd like to know. Sounds like a good little project for this weekend.

Very easy to do, and it should take just a minute of wiring mod. You will spend more time trying to program the brake light! :)

 

Look at the top-box connector under the pillion seat, and as I said, you want to make your modification to the bike-side connector. You should see 6 conductors going into that connector. Open up (cut) the looming around the conductor bundle, if you need to have more of the wires in the open. The +ve wire that operates the aux. LED is colored grey/black/yellow. This is the wire that you want to cut, BUT leave at least an inch of wire, or more, from the connector so that you can easily strip and make a splice to the brake conductor off the Canopener. I use a micro-PosiSplice connector for this. That is it! You can simply tape the other cut end of that conductor, or do as I did, which was to cap the loose end off with another micro-PosiSplice connector, to protect the cut end and to allow me to convert everything back should I want to do so!

 

For reference, I had used the wire ID information from instruction posted on Skene's site, and this is the picture (ignore everything but the brake light ID):

 

K1600-topcase-IQ-260-sm.jpg

Edited by PadG
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The ezCAN will turn any rear LED into a flashing brake light and a deceleration light, right out of the box, er bag.

 

Edited by LAF
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