Electrical Gremlin: Brake Lights Work When Bike is Off

Hey Everyone, I've been working through some electrical issues on my '82 XJ650 lately and was wondering if anyone has had a similar experience or words of wisdom.

I have a strange electrical gremlin where, even shut off with the keys pulled, my brake lights work if I use either front or rear brake. Key in "off" position.

I have also run into the issue where I have hopped on my bike and found the battery drained overnight, specifically when locking my front fork. Key in "lock" position.

I will be combing through the electric looking for any shorts or crosses that could explain this but I was also thinking about the "P" just past the "lock" position on the ignition. I do believe this is for parking lights (please correct me if I am wrong), and was wondering if it could be possible that the ignition could be gummed up and regardless of position is running the parking lights?

 

EDIT: The brake light doesn't come on with the rear brake, only the front.

 

My best guess on the brake light would be the wires are hooked up incorrectly in the headlight bucket. There is a always hot connection in there for a fairing or other accessory, maybe someone reconnected your brake light switch connections from the master cylinder to this hot connection instead of the switched one that is usually used.

 

There is a green/yellow wire coming from the switch, it should be plugged into a green/yellow. Other wire is Brown which plugs into brown. Curious if they plugged one of the switch wires into Red and the other into Green/Yellow.

 

P turns on parking lights

start here and look inside the switch sounds like the issue is there with battery draining in lock.

Clean and lube the ignition switch
with key off all power is turned off to fuses except main which supplies power to igmition switch (key)
make sure there are no jumper wires on the fuse box from main fuse.

 

That is exactly what happened, thank you so much.

It is a rat nest that I need to spend some time cleaning up, but you can see brown to red in the upper right, and an unused brown with two slots where my finger is.

Brake light now works as it should. Parking light/ lock draining battery mystery is ongoing as switching to P doesn't seem to do anything but I will be spending time investigating that next.

Thank you guys for all the help, this community is a lifesaver.

 

Cool, move that brown wire over to the one that your finger is on and you'll be good.

Does putting the key in P turn the taillight on?

 

It does not, and after seeing that the brake light was attached to the hot connection I'm curious to see if this too is mis-wired. Before I do that though I think I should lock the fork and see if it is actually the culprit killing the battery. For all I know correcting the brake light could have solved the problem.