Run Turn Brake Module

A Run Turn Brake module or RTB module is an easy addition for greater visibility and allows your motorcycle’s turn signals to operate like the tail lights in some older sports cars. They’ll stay on constantly at 1/2 or 3/4 power (running lights) and go to full brightness when you hit the brakes or use the turn signals. Many chopper guys with the super wide rear tires don’t have space for a traditional dedicated brake light and only have turn signals. Together with the addition of the RTB module the two turn signals work together as the brake lights.

NOTE: By law any rear running lights have to be red. If your turn signals are amber, you’ll need to fix that with red bulbs or red lenses. Mine were already red so I didn’t have to change anything.

Hopefully the additional lighting from the rear will make me a little more visible, especially when loaded down with a tour pack and all the luggage we’ll have during our up coming trip.

There are several brands of RTB modules available that will work some generic ones that will work on any model bike require splicing others are model specific that plug right into the wiring harness. I chose to go with the easy route and get one made for my bike so that its easily reversible later if the additional lighting ended up being too big of a drain on the weak charging system. They cost a bit more but in my opinion $20-$30 more for something that takes 5 minutes to install versus having to splice and solder a bunch of connections that could take me an hour or two is well worth it for me, and its easily removable.

I bought mine off of Cruiser Customizing but later I found they sell them off of Amazon as well. For the 2004 and up model V Star 650’s you’ll need the Kuryakyn #4612 (look around the same thing lists for different prices on the same site from different 3rd party vendors), for the 1999 to 2003 models you’ll need Kuryakyn #4613.

This is the contents of the kit, pretty simple. This is just a simple RTB kit, it doesnt include anything for LED turn signals, if you have those and your bike only has one turn indicator in the dash like our V Star 650 you’ll need to pony up to a higher end kit that will work with them or add in the Kuryakyn Diode Kit (or do it yourself like this).

The black box is a load equalizer to add additional resistance to the circuits so that the stock flashers will work at the right speed. There is an extra plug for an additional load equalizer if the single one isnt enough. My lights did flash faster than normal with the RTB installed but as the load equalizer will just add more of a drain to the already anemic charging system I just left it off.

You can also see an extra tab on the side that says “Flashing”. With this connected every time you touch the brakes all of the lights will flash a few times and then go steady, as my Shiney-Hiney tail light already has that feature built in it just makes my tail light go nuts and I left it disabled. For regular tail lights though this is a nice feature.

Heres the stock wiring harness, the top connector on the side of the battery is the turn signals.

Simply unhook it and conect the RTB in the middle and stuff all the wiring out of the way. Thats it! Total time to do this mod is about 5 minutes with most of that getting the battery cover on and off.

I think I can be seen a little better now. More light makes it right.