LED Headlight Mod - Where's That Brown Reverse Wire?

supercharged111

supercharged111

Member
Joined
Sep 12, 2011
Messages
123
Age
42
Location
Da U.P.
So I bought some LED bulbs and I want to stick one in my 98 700SX which is a single beam. I got some 30W bulbs so I can use 2 in case I hunt down a later dual beam housing. Even the 1 is gonna be a game changer. But I can't seem to find this brown reverse beeper wire that folks (Murder Yamaha) allude to. I peeled the plastic housing back that goes in front of your right knee and found a few plugs. None appeared to have a brown wire, but regardless I poked every single one with my multimeter. I found a few that had around 6.5V DC which sounded like an odd voltage, so I rechecked them and they were about 13V AC. More useless wires. I'm going to start searching for schematic which hopefully have connector locations on them. This reverse wire should have an unplugged connector just dangling there, right? A pic would be super helpful, that's the one thing I haven't yet managed to find.
 
Last edited:
Did some more digging and found a pic of it plain as day in a Proaction Reverse Installation article on here.


And here you can see the plug plain as day with a brown and a pink wire.

Vmax Reverse Beeper.jpg

I'd poked this very connector yesterday and did not observe 12V on my multimeter. Will try harder today I guess. I'd clipped my ground to that folded aluminum sheet that the beeper is bolted to.
 
Back on the sled again today, that brown wire has 6.5V DC and 13V AC. Not what I need to run an LED headlight. Blip the gas and maybe 6.7 or 6.8, that's it. I have no idea how folks are converting to LED using this wire.

Yamaha Footwell Resized.jpg
 
Last edited:
So I said screw it and wired it up anyway with the brown wire even though the multimeter doesn't lie.

Yamaha Headlight Wiring Resized.jpg

I used bullet connectors up at the handlebars so I could reverse this mod if need be. The LED headlight bulb is working, not flickering, but seems underwhelming. I used this line of bulbs on my wife's car and the difference was night and day, so I have to wonder if the 6.5V isn't just choking the thing. Or maybe the brown wire is AC too and I'm just counting down to smoking this new bulb.
 
Last edited:
the wire you are looking for is the wire that supplies power to the reverse alarm. The Rectifier (number 2 in schematic) has clean D/C voltage. Its possible that the 2000 Vmax is already all D/C and that wire does not exist in the schematic above. Its also possible that the 2000 Mountain sled did not have reverse as an option. This is a bad picture but it clearly shows the wire going to number 21 DC back buzzer. https://totallyamaha.net/threads/83513/. I have a 97 SX700 with a Cyclops LED fed off of the buzzer wire, it is clean D/C power, and its Awesome. What is your location?
 
Post #4 shows the plug with the pink and brown wires, I connected it to that brown wire. But the multimeter only showed 6.5V DC on that brown wire. What have been your observations with the multimeter?

The blue wire up at the handlebars is the source of AC power for the headlight. What I'm not a huge fan of is the fact that the reverse beeper brown wire is a smaller gauge wire than the factory blue wire.

I'm in the U.P. so I can go for a rip right out of my front yard.
 
Whatever color the wire for the 1997 SX back up alarm is D/C power. At about 1800 rpm should be about 12v DC. Can you call me? I can PM you my number
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


Back
Top