Rear Amber Marker Lights Sucessfully Completed

Here is the final on using the rear turn signals and rear amber marker lights you have all been waiting for. First off I thought of modifying the turn signal circuit to match the front turn signal / markers. I pushed that idea to the wayside because the power needed to run through the dash circuit board to make it work. The tolerances of the traces the circuit would have run through on the circuit board were way to close to maximum amperage to feel comfortable with. I wouldn't want anyone blowing out the circuit board from over heating a trace running too much current through it. I also found that the transistor wouldn't handle the full current of four 1156A lamps which is what most of us use. Way too close to the limit of the transistor. So we had to look at alternate ways.

I went to Pull A Part auto salvage this morning on my Silverwing looking for a few parts for Rosie's 09 Chevy Aveo. She needed a trim piece. While removing the trim piece I had an idea. That idea was to look through the import car section and find a 1157 lamp socket that is very close if not spot on to the 1156 lamp socket in the Silverwing. So I removed the Silverwing 1156 lamp socket in my Silverwing and started hunting. Low and behold I found what I was looking for in a 1999 Hyundai Elantra. The lamp socket of the Elantra was the same diameter and nearly the exact same tab configuration so I took a chance and brought two home. They cost me $5.18 total. After a slight modification to the tabs with a razor knife, the socket fit perfectly in the turn signal housing. So now we use an 1157A lamp for the turn signal (27 watt side) and use the second filament for the marker (8.5 watt side). All you need do is remove 2 tabs completely and modify the other two tabs to get close to the original tabs of the Silverwing lamp holder. It took me about 5 minutes to modify each lamp holder.

There are three taps to be made per side. The Silverwing has a green ground wire in the harness so we tap the ground of the new lamp socket to that green wire. The marker of the new lamp socket taps to the marker wire of the marker/stop light wire, Bl/Br for both sides. The right side turn signal on the new socket taps to the Lb wire of the right turn signal wire. The left side turn signal on the new socket taps to the O wire.

That's all there is to it. There are pictures below including a new wire diagram. As far as the old sockets go, leave them as they be or remove them from the clips and save them. Just make sure you remove the old lamps from those sockets if you leave them. I chose to unclip mine and put them away in my spare parts tote.

Pictures continued

Nice job on all points.

We had an earlier topic on converting the rear turn signals for use as running lights back in 2015. When I made the conversion I discovered that replacing the new-socket’s O-ring with the original Honda O-ring allowed the new socket to fit the tail light housing without modification.

https://www.silverwing600.com/t8780-turn-signal-running-lights#87186

Thanks so much for all the research you’ve done Ken. I would be nice to be able to use the CM meter and circuits to pull this off with the original amber rear marker lights. But thanks to your expertise we’ve been saved from outselves.

Cosmic_Jumper wrote:

Thanks so much for all the research you’ve done Ken. It would be nice to be able to use the CM meter and circuits to pull this off with the original amber rear marker lights. But thanks to your expertise we’ve been saved from outselves.

That was my original objective to use the CM meter and circuits to achieve the rear marker lights. Unfortunately the traces on the board will not handle the current needed. So it was back to finding a different way.

So we have achieved amber rear markers. However we have also achieved an illegal situation. Amber markers can not be used on the rear of any private vehicle in Ohio but red markers and turn signals are legal. Because 1157 red lamps are not readily available at the corner auto parts stores, I will be going to LEDs with a 6 to 10 ohm ceramic wire wound resistor in parallel to the lamp to solve the hyper flash problem. I will also be changing the tail lights to LED as well. I will be cutting out the butt connectors in my pictures and adding the resistors at that point using new butt connectors. One for each side between the turn signal conductor and the ground conductor for the ghost load the system needs to see.

The whole idea was to achieve higher visibility while riding so going LED is the way to go without adding anything aftermarket extra. I'm a guy who likes good  safe modifications but I want the "stock" look. When I purchased my Silverwing, the Givi top box was loaded up with amber and red aftermarket lights. Yes, the visibility was high but the look was ugly as sin and the drain on the electrical system was out of control. They had to go.

Stellar hack, Sir