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I have a '74 Honda CL200 that I've nurtured back into good condition, except the taillight and brake light are not working. I checked for voltage and the maximum I seem to get is about .1 volts.

If I turn the key to the last position (parking lights????) I do get a lit bulb.

Any suggestions? I find it really odd that exteemely low voltage is coming from both positive wires. Also, I can't verify that the brake switch is working just yet, but every other light on the bike works.

Help!!!!

check the wires all the way from the light itself back to the fuse box. prolly just rubbed through the insulation somewhere along the way or had some field mice chew through it.

Thanks for your advice. There's one thing I'm not understanding...maybe you would be willing to give me a little more info if you know the answer.

-There are three wires - brown, green/yellow, and green. The green is just the ground.
-The brown wire goes to the ignition switch ultimately.
-The green/yellow wire goes over to the brake switch.

-If you turn the key two notches in order to turn on parking lights, the taillight gets full voltage and lights up.

So what I'm wondering is WHICH wire that's feeding from...because whichever wire that is must not be bad as far as the wire itself.

It makes sense that it would be the brown wire, so maybe the taillight issue is something not linked into the headlight switch up in the headlight bucket.

The green lead is the ground and should go to a connector that also grounds the turnsignals, the green/yellow lead is the stop light and goes to a connector that is feed by both stop switches. The brown lead is the tail light and it goes to the keyswitch.

Thanks. That's good info to start with.

Thanks again to everyone for their help on this issue. I'm getting much closer and discovered that the front brake light switch is just plain missing and the rear brake light switch seems to not work at all.

I did a lot of work with the multimeter over the weekend and did a lot of bypassing with jumper wire to try to resolve this.

While it would be easy enough to "rig" the taillight by tapping into the brown parking light lead from something like the guage lamps, I would rather fix it right.

So, I'm wondering this - does the voltage for the taillight come in through the green/yellow brake light wire somehow?

No. The brown lead is the tail light. The green/yellow wire is the stop light.

I suggest you get a manual for your bike. One with the wiring diagram in it.

Yeah - I have one of those...just isn't doing the trick for me. The brown wire, at least according to the diagram, goes directly into the key switch.

When I turn the switch all the way to the parking light position, the taillight does come on.

One thing I don't know about this bike, since I never saw it in full working condition (yet) is if the taillight is supposed to be one always, like the newer bikes. If so, that would point to a problem on the key switch, right?