New LED running lights are dim as hell...

[Aracheon]

Okay - gonna do my best to explain this one:

The previous owner of my bike was so kind as to install flush mount turn signals... but in the process destroyed the fairings by dremmeling out MUCH more plastic than he/she should have. Since I'm having the bike repainted this year, the holes have been filled in and I'm faced with a completely flush fascia on which to mount new ones. No problem, as I bought a nice looking (albeit cheap) 2-wire LED set. Sure, I'd have to use a SPDT relay to allow me to use them as both running lamps and turn signals, but I'm okay with a little bit of soldering.

But...

The stock front signals are a 3-wire, dual-filament bulb type setup. When the bike is on, one of the filaments is lit. When the turn signal is activated, the running filament turns off and the signal filament flashes. But after tinkering around with my multimeter to figure out which wires I needed to hook up to the relay, it looks like the wires change polarity! (The running light's (+) wire becomes (-), and the signal wire becomes positive!) Not only that, but when the LEDs are hooked up to the running light wires, they're dim as hell, and they also partially light up the turn signal indicators on the gauge cluster... making them essentially useless as running lights unless I can figure out what's going on.

(I would like to point out that the ghetto bulb-type eBay flush mount that came on the bike works perfectly fine as a running light, as well as a turn signal.)

[CanAm]

Are you sure that the negative side of these lights has a solid connection to ground (zero ohms or close to it all the way back to the battery - terminal). Bad grounds can cause the weirdest conditions, like lighting up other lights. And motorcycles can be very deceiving. What looks like a good ground may not be.