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Picture of a lost-travel brake switch. Commonly found in Ford Mustangs.

Brake Switch

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In previous posts, we talked about how to wire the brake lights to the rear POWERCELL in our customer’s 1967 Mustang.  We’re going to talk about wiring the brake switch in this post.  This is a very easy MASTERCELL switch input to wire.  There are lots of different brake pedal switches out there.  Here are a few examples from the Summit Racing website.

 

Hydraulic pressure brake switch

Hydraulic pressure brake switch

MOPAR-style brake switch

MOPAR-style brake switch

Automotive brake pedal switch

Automotive brake pedal switch

Picture of a lost-travel brake switch. Commonly found in Ford Mustangs.

Picture of a lost-travel brake switch. Commonly found in Ford Mustangs.

This last brake switch is what our customer is using in the 1967 Mustang.  All of these switches have 2 terminals on them.  One will connect to the MASTERCELL input wire.  The other will connect to ground.  When the pedal is pressed, there is continuity between the MASTERCELL input wire and ground.  Refer back to this illustration again.

Simple diagram showing how to wire a switch to the Infinitybox MASTERCELL

Simple diagram showing how to wire a switch to the Infinitybox MASTERCELL

The brake pedal switch simply connects between the MASTERCELL input and ground.

Start by checking the configuration sheet that came with your kit.  This link will take you to an earlier post in this series about the importance of your configuration sheet.  This car is wired with separate brake light and turn signal outputs on the rear POWERCELL so we’re going to use the MASTERCELL input for Brake Lights with Multi-Filament Bulbs.  This post will get you more information on the different turn-signal and brake light options.

We checked our configuration sheet.  The MASTERCELL input for the brake switch for the configuration that we want is the Yellow-Green wire.  This is input 15 on the MASTERCELL A connector.  Remember that the MASTERCELL input wire needs to connect to one side of the switch.  The other side of the switch needs to connect to ground.  In the case of the brake switch, there is no polarity.  You can connect the MASTERCELL input to either of the terminals on the switch.

In the case of the Mustang switch, you can purchase the mating connector and harness that plugs onto the back of the switch.  This has the two wires that connect to the MASTERCELL input and ground.  You can splice or solder these wires in any way as described in previous posts in this series.

For the ground connection, you have two options.  You can make the ground connection directly to the chassis at the brake pedal.  Make sure that this connection is made on the body, not on the brake pedal mechanism.  You will not get good continuity to ground through the pedal linkage.  Put a ring terminal on the ground wire to connect to the chassis.  Make sure that you have a metal-to-metal connection for this ground.  The junction should be free of dirt, grease, oil, rust, paint, powder coating or any other contaminant.

You also have the option to use any of the black wires in the MASTERCELL harness as your ground connection.  There are 8 black, ground wires in the MASTERCELL A harness.  All 8 of these wires are electrically the same.  You can use any of them to be the ground connection for your brake switch.

Here’s how your brake light circuit will work when it is connected.  When you step on the brake pedal, the contacts in the brake switch close.  This connection takes the MASTERCELL brake input and connects it to ground.  The MASTERCELL detects that the input has been grounded and sends a command to the POWERCELL in the rear of the car.  The POWERCELL receives this signal and turns on the output for the brake lights.  When you take your foot off of the brake pedal, the contacts in the brake switch open.  This disconnects the MASTERCELL input from ground.  The MASTERCELL sees this input turn off and sends a command to the rear POWERCELL.  The rear POWERCELL gets this command and turns off the brake lights.  It seems complicated, but it isn’t.  All of this is automatically managed from within the Infinitybox system.

If you have questions about connecting your brake switch, you can click on this link to contact a member of our team.  Keep watching our blog for more updates on wiring switches in our customer’s 1967 Mustang.

Rear LED tail lights on a 1967 Mustang Restomod wired with the Infinitybox systemCopyright Infinitybox, LLC 2021. All Rights Reserved.

Turn Signals & Brake Lights

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We’re making good progress on wiring the outputs on our 1967 Mustang.  We’ve made it though headlights, high-beams and parking lights.  Now, let’s wire the turn signals and the brake lights.  Just like the parking lights, there are turn-signals in the front of the car and the rear.  Your 20-Circuit Kit is set up with dedicated outputs on the front & rear POWERCELLs to make wiring these easy.  We’re going to talk about wiring the POWERCELL outputs in this post.  We’ll get to wiring the inputs in a later post.

Our Infinitybox system has a few advantages over traditional wiring harnesses when it comes to turn-signals and brake lights.

  1. The flashing is done inside the POWERCELL.  You don’t need a separate flasher module to actually blink the turn signals.
  2. The wiring to the turn signals is much shorter than a traditional wiring harness because you’re connecting the bulbs to the POWERCELL located in the front and rear of the car.
  3. It doesn’t matter if you are using incandescent bulbs of LEDs.  Since the POWERCELL is doing the flashing, you don’t need a load-resistor for LED’s.
  4. We can manage any different type of turn signal configuration.  That is done by picking different MASTERCELL input wires.

For the brake lights, there are two different options.  We’ll be the first to admit that this can be a little confusing.

In some cars, you have a separate bulb or filament on a light bulb that is for the brake lights.  When you step on the brake light pedal, that switch controls its own light.  We call this a multi-filament configuration.  There are multiple bulb filaments that handle the turn signals and the brake lights.  In this configuration, there is a separate POWERCELL output for the brake lights.  This picture shows you the wiring for the multi-filament configuration.

Diagram showing how to wire turn signals and brake lights with the Infinitybox system.

Diagram showing how to wire turn signals and brake lights with the Infinitybox system.

In other cars, the rear turn-signals also work as the brake lights.  In this case, you have a single filament that works as both the turn-signal and the brake light.  This function was usually managed within the steering column mechanism.  We call this a 1-filament configuration or a single-filament configuration.  That means there is one bulb filament on the left side and one on the right side of the rear of the car that works as the turn-signal and brake light.  If you use our 1-filament configuration, the rear left and right turn-signals will flash when you turn on the left or right turn signal.  If you step on the brake pedal, both the left & right turn-signal outputs will turn on together for the brake lights.  If you have a turn-signal on and you step on the brake lights, the turn signal will over ride the brake light on that side of the car.  This picture shows you the wiring for the 1-filament configuration.

Wiring diagram for 1-filament brake lights and turn signals for the Infinitybox system.

Wiring diagram for 1-filament brake lights and turn signals for the Infinitybox system.

Here’s a good rule of thumb to figure out which brake light configuration you have in your car.  If your turn signals are amber, you probably have the multi-filament configuration.  There are separate red lights for the brake lights.  If your turn-signals are red, you probably have the 1-filament configuration.  Those red lights in the corner of the car are both the turn-signals and the brake lights.

Once you figure out the brake light configuration that you have in your car, go to your configuration sheet and pick the POWERCELL output wire colors. In most configurations, the left turn-signal is the brown wire on the front & rear POWERCELL.  The right turn-signal is the violet wire on the front & rear POWERCELL.  Connect these wires to the left & right turn signals in the front & rear of the car.  The POWERCELL output wire goes to one wire on the turn signal bulb.  The other wire on the turn signal bulb goes to ground on the chassis.  If you are using LED’s make sure that you have the polarity of the bulbs correct.  The bulbs will not light if the wires are backwards.

If you are using the multi-filament configuration, you need to splice the brake light output to the brake light bulb on the left & right side of the car.  Follow the instructions that we gave in the headlight post for making these splices.  If you have a third-brake light or a CHMSL in the car, you can splice off of this same brake light output to power the extra light.

In our customer’s 1967 Mustang, they are using a sequential tail light assembly made by Mustang Projects.  You can see the details on that at this link.  Their system comes with a very simple manual that shows how to connect the wires for the left turn, right turn and brake lights.  This one was wired using the multi-filament configuration which meant that there was a separate output for a brake light.  It was very easy.  This picture shows the tail light assemblies mounted in the car.

Rear LED tail lights on a 1967 Mustang Restomod wired with the Infinitybox system

Rear LED tail lights on a 1967 Mustang Restomod wired with the Infinitybox system

The last step in wiring the turn-signals and the brake lights is to wire the indicators on the dash.  You simply splice off the POWERCELL outputs in the front of the car and run 22-AWG wires to the dash indicators.  This customer tied into the outputs for the left & right turn-signals, ran these wires to the indicators and grounded the other side of the indicator.  They were using LEDs for the indicators so they had to make sure that they had the polarity of the bulbs correct.

Our Infinitybox Splice Saver Kit is a really simple accessory that can be used to make splicing your turn signals indicators into their respective outputs easy.  This picture shows how you can create a sealed junction point with the Splice Saver for your turn signals and their indicators.

Wiring turn signals and dash indicators with the Infinitybox Splice Saver Kit

Wiring turn signals and dash indicators with the Infinitybox Splice Saver Kit

That is it for turn-signals and brake lights.  Stay tuned for the next posts talking about wiring this 1967 Mustang with our Infinitybox 20-Circuit Kit.  If you have questions or comments, please contact us at this link.

 

Picture of Digi-Tails Sequential Tail Lights

Digi-Tails

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Our Infinitybox system is designed to control about anything electrical in your car, truck or custom vehicle.  Here’s an example of wiring tail lights manufactured by Digi-Tails.

Digi-Tails makes a very broad range of LED tail light assemblies for a full range of vehicles.  If you’re building it, they probably have a kit for your car.  This includes Mustangs, Camaros, Tri-Fives, MOPAR and most anything else.  They make traditional and sequential kits.  You can check out their full product line here.

Wiring their kits with your 10-Circuit or 20-Harness from Infinitybox couldn’t be simpler.  The bottom line is you wire their assemblies just like you would wire the traditional tail lights that came with your car.  They have a wire for the parking lights, the left turn signal and the right turn signal.  You connect those wires to the same outputs on the rear POWERCELL.  Connect your MASTERCELL input wires to the turn signal stalk and the brake pedal and you’re ready to go.

Digi-Tails tries to match the original wiring colors in the OEM harness to their wiring.  Depending on the kit you have from them, the wires for the turn signals and running lights may be a different color.  Here’s how you want to match your POWERCELL output wires to their wires.

  • Their Driver Side Tail Lights or Driver Side Turn Signal should connect to the LEFT TURN SIGNAL from your rear POWERCELL.  In most Infinitybox kits, this is the brown wire but always check your configuration sheet.
  • Their Passenger Side Tail Lights or Passenger Side Turn Signal should connect to the RIGHT TURN SIGNAL from your rear POWERCELL.  In most Infinitybox kits, this is the violet wire but always check your configuration sheet.
  • Their Running Lights wire should connect to the PARKING LIGHT output from your rear POWERCELL.  In most Infinitybox kits, this is the yellow wire but always check your configuration sheet.

The only real difference when wiring a Digi-Tails tail light panel is that they need a constant 12-volt power feed to power the electronics on their LED board.  In most of their kits this is the orange wire going to each tail light assembly.  Check their manual for the specifics of your kit.  You can easily do this with one of our POWERPLUG 12-volt accessories.  This simply plugs into one of the unused power ports on your rear POWERCELL.  It has an integrated fuse holder to properly protect the wire against getting shorted to ground.  In this case, we’d recommend fusing that wire with a 5-amp fuse.  You can learn more about the POWERPLUG at this link.

When using the Digi-Tails tail lights, you want to use the MASTERCELL inputs for 1-filament.  By doing this, you are setting the system to manage the turn-signals and the brake lights together on the same outputs.  This link will take you to an older blog post that talks about our different turn signal options.

Here is a simple diagram that shows you how to connect the outputs from your rear POWERCELL to any of the Digi-Tails tail light kits.

Picture of a wiring diagram showing how to wire Digi-Tails Sequential Lights with Infinitybox

Picture of a wiring diagram showing how to wire Digi-Tails Sequential Lights with Infinitybox

You can download a copy of this diagram by clicking this link.

Contact our technical support group if you have questions about wiring your Digi-Tails with our Infinitybox system.

Diagram showing how to wire turn signals and brake lights with the Infinitybox system.Copyright Infinitybox, LLC 2021. All Rights Reserved.

Turn-Signal Options

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We get a lot of questions about turn signals and brake lights.  There are two options in our standard front-engine configuration: Mechanical Multi-Filament and Mechanical Single-Filament. This is where there is sometimes some confusion. In both cases, this is where you use a traditional steering column with the canceling mechanism built in. This can be an OEM column or one from an aftermarket company like IDIDIT or Flaming River. In both cases, the mechanism in the column turns off the turn-signal action when the steering wheel returns to the center position.

The mechanical column, multi-filament configuration should be used when you have separate filaments in the rear of the car for the turn-signals and the brake lights. These could be completely separate bulbs or different filaments in a multi-filament bulb. The inputs to the MASTERCELL control separate outputs for left & right turn-signals plus the brake light.  There is a good rule of thumb for multi-filament turn-signals: if your turn-signals are amber, you should probably be using the multi-filament configuration.

The mechanical column, single-filament configuration should be used when the brake lights share a common filament with the turn-signals in the back of the car. Remember that you need to look at the filaments, not the bulbs. In this case, the MASTERCELL inputs will activate the left and right turn-signals as directionals. You only wire the left and right turn-signal wires to the bulbs. No brake light output is required. For the brake light, the left and right turn-signal filaments light together.

Once you figure out what you need in the car, you just pick the inputs that you need and wire them to the column. This schematic will show you how to wire the MASTERCELL inputs to the GM, IDIDIT and Flaming River columns.

If you have any questions about wiring your turn-signals, give our team a call at (847) 232-1991 or email us at sales@infinitybox.com.  Or you can contact our team directly by clicking this link.