Can anyone help me wire a brake light onto my e bike?

Joined
Feb 6, 2019
Messages
333
Bought one of these for my e bike: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B087FX6LHC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Basically I have a 12v step down from my 60v battery I use to run all my lights. I think I know how to wire it but looking online wasn't helpful so I just need someone to confirm this isn't going to burn it out.

There's three wires, so is it correct that for the running light, I would have one wire from the 12v step down through my switch and into the correct wire on the tail light?

And for the brake light, I would need to have a separate wire running from the 12v step down thru my brake lever switch and to the correct wire on the tail light, right?

Is it that simple?
 
Get a motorcycle already. That's obviously what you want. What's the holdup?
 
The light you bought on Amazon will have one wire as a common ground. The other two wires will be the positive 12V+ lead for tail light and the other for a brighter brake light.

Test your assumptions on a car battery. Then only the light is at risk....

Not enough to go much further. The brake levers already probably have some sort of cutoff wiring to the motor controller. Probably not good to mix these two requirements into the same wiring path. So you likely need another isolated source to identify a braking condition.
 
BlueSeas said:
The light you bought on Amazon will have one wire as a common ground. The other two wires will be the positive 12V+ lead for tail light and the other for a brighter brake light.

Test your assumptions on a car battery. Then only the light is at risk....

Not enough to go much further. The brake levers already probably have some sort of cutoff wiring to the motor controller. Probably not good to mix these two requirements into the same wiring path. So you likely need another isolated source to identify a braking condition.

Thanks, I figured it out and it was as I thought.
 
Chalo said:
Get a motorcycle already. That's obviously what you want. What's the holdup?

It's just my opinion but I think these bikes are a lot cooler than motorcycles and sometimes more fun to ride XD
 
speedyebikenoob said:
Chalo said:
Get a motorcycle already. That's obviously what you want. What's the holdup?

It's just my opinion but I think these bikes are a lot cooler than motorcycles and sometimes more fun to ride XD

I agree. But as a result, I want mine not to look like a motorcycle. Brake and turn lights undermine that.

Car taters give you more room if you're on a bike than if you're on a moto.
 
BlueSeas said:
Only if they see you...anything to increase visibility is a good thing.

Bikes have lights, if they're operating legally at night. My e-bikes' lights run on 48V and are very bright. But I don't use brake lights, mirrors, a fairing, or anything else that would blur the fact that I'm on a bicycle. I use a blinky rear light on one of them, to emphasize the point.
 
I used to just use little head and tail lights...and cars simply ignored them the same way they ignored my presence on the road (and any other bicycle), except for those that would deliberately try to run me over or run me off the road, or hit me with their mirrors, etc.

Over time I have added more and brighter lighting, including the turn signals and brake lights, and driver reaction to that has always been an improvement with each step.

I'd like to think that just "being a bicycle" should be respected in and of itself, but that's generally not the case, not here. If it is where you ride, you've got better drivers there than anywhere I've ridden (almost all of it here in the Valley Of The Sun, a little bit on country gravel backroads and such in northeast Texas as a kid).

I learned early to use mirrors, because there was too much risk taking the time to turn my head completely away from the road in front of me for well over a second or two, every few seconds, to keep an eye on whatever is coming up from behind to run me over--because in the second or two my head is turned, a pedestrian could (and have!) stepped off the sidewalk (or a cyclist ride off the sidewalk) into the road directly in front of me, and I'd then hit them and crash because I wouldn't know they were there.

Chalo said:
I agree. But as a result, I want mine not to look like a motorcycle. Brake and turn lights undermine that.

Car taters give you more room if you're on a bike than if you're on a moto.
Not here in Phoenix. The best way I get "road respect" is by having the same lighting, same directional communication system, as the majority of the things on the road (even if many of them don't *use* their directional communication system correctly or at all, they do still know what it means when others do). Even without my downlighting and marker lights, just having the tail, brake, and turn signals, day or night, makes a definite and important difference in how drivers respond to my intended maneuvers on the road.

And nobody, even other cyclists, know what hand signals mean, these days.


It also helps that I use much larger bikes than the typical ones, because drivers that don't give room because of the lights do it because they're afraid hitting me might actually scratch their paint. ;)


Some of them also get confused when they see me pedalling, while also having tail/brake/turn/etc signals...but this typically just makes them give me *more* road room.
 
Back
Top