brown wire bypass

I am trying to get my brake light to work and I'm usually pretty good with wiring... but i cannot of the life of me get it to work as original, I have tail lights and if i find a hot lead near the headlight harness to bypass the hand brake switch i get a couple of dash lights to light up as well as the brake light. I currently have no headlight and the tach isn't plugged in, I don't know if this is the cause.
Ive read thru the schematics and it seems like the "brown" wire is probably my issue, I have power to the brown wire at the fuse block but its difficult tracing it too far.

So my question is can I just bypass the brown wire altogether and run a new one to the brake light switches?

It helps to mention the exact model. Lacking that info & throwing out a guess. my disclaimer. hee.
The brown wire circuit may go to the ignition switch, so check to make sure it's connected at the ign switch pigtail. With the ignition switch ON, you could check the brown wire voltage at the pigtail. If there's no voltage, you could remove the ignition switch back cover to make sure the soldered connections are good.

On my bike & others the brown wire basically terminates at the voltage regulator & acts as a sensor wire for the reg-rec.

Including information about bike year and model is helpful to viewers and usually elicits better responses.

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Good Fortune!

So true, sorry about the lack of info: 2002 KZ100P

I'll take a look at the ign

Thanks

2002 KZ1000P

There's likely a pressure switch in the front brake line.

The switch should have two wires attached.

One wire is probably brown, which is the "hot" wire into the pressure switch when the ignition switch is turned ON.

The other wire may be blue or some other color, and it goes from the pressure switch to the brake light filament in the rear bulb.

When the brake is applied, the pressure switch connects the two wires, whereby the blue wire furnishes battery+ voltage to the brake light filament in the rear bulb.

The rear brake switch, activated by depressing the foot brake pedal, works similarly, but is mechanically activated rather than pressure activated.

Good Fortune!

With the ignition switched ON, would measure for voltage at the connector on the brown wire that clips to the pressure switch. May disconnect the brown wire from the pressure switch in order to measure the voltage at the connector.

If there's voltage on the brown wire into the pressure switch (brown wire re-connected to the pressure switch), squeezing the front brake lever should produce voltage on the other pole of the pressure switch. But if not, the pressure switch may be defective, because it's failing to allow passage of current through itself when there's pressure on the brake line.

Good Fortune!

How many miles are on the bike?
Assuming the br wire goes to the ign switch & no voltage there.
If the mileage is high, the ignition switch could be worn out & in need of replacement. (???).
The voltage regulator for the 2002 P21 has a brown wire, so I would assume it functions as the sensor wire. The reg-rec monitors the brown wire voltage to determine whether or not to charge the battery.

Color Codes On Most Kawasaki’s (written for 1980’s bikes)

HEADLIGHT
RED with BLACK stripe, High Beam.
RED with YELLOW stripe, Low Beam.
BLACK with YELLOW stripe, the ground circuit.

BRAKE/TAIL LIGHT Can be an # 1157 dual filament bulb
RED, Running or Tail Light.
BLUE,(sometimes with a Red stripe) Brake Light Circuit.
BLACK with YELLOW stripe, the ground circuit.

LEFT FRONT TURN SIGNAL Can be an #1157 dual filament bulb
GREEN, Left front turn signal circuit.
BLUE, Left front running light circuit.
BLACK with YELLOW stripe, the ground circuit.

RIGHT FRONT TURN SIGNAL Can be an # 1157 dual filament bulb
GREY, Right front turn signal circuit.
BLUE, Right front running light circuit.
BLACK with YELLOW stripe, the ground circuit.

LEFT REAR TURN SIGNAL Can be an #1156 single filament bulb
GREEN, Left rear turn signal circuit.
BLACK with YELLOW stripe, the ground circuit.

RIGHT REAR TURN SIGNAL Can be an #1156 single filament bulb
GREY, Right rear turn signal circuit.
BLACK with YELLOW stripe, the ground circuit.

Those old 5 way kz1000 fuseboxes are unreliable, try holding the brake light on and jiggling the wires close to the fusebox and see if it blinks. Maybe persevere a bit more and see if power is going out of the fusebox to the brake circuit and trace it.

That brown wire at the ignition switch could be from the regulator, if so you want a different keyfeed live, really a fused live from after the fusebox on this.

I've been tracing wires and so far I haven't found any defective wires and as far as I can tell the headlight, tail/brake and tach all use the same power but only the tail and headlights work.

I'm just gonna mount the new headlight when I get it next week and then run a new clean/keyed power to the brake light.

Thanks for all the helpful info.