I am making my motorbike naked, and I have two individual headlights that I have now mounted on the bike, each is 55W. From the bike, for the headlights there are two pairs of wires, one pair for each headlight. Each of my new headlights have a pair of wires also. So we're all good there.

On the bike, one pair has a blue wire and a black. I soldered the blue to the blue on the headlight, and black to black on the headlight... The other pair from the bike is red and black. I soldered the red to the blue on the headlight, and the black to the black on the headlight. I understand that black is negative or ground, but I don't know why the use one red for positive on the bike and one blue for the other positive on the bike. Is it so you can tell which is wired for the high beam light? Also, I don't know why the positive wires would be blue on the headlights rather than red...

Anyway, I started the bike (you have to do this on my bike as the lights only turn on when you start the bike), and blew the 10A fuse for the headlight. So I replaced it with a 15A fuse and proceeded to blow that also. So I have not yet seen light from these headlights. Given the lights are each 55W, I would have thought that a 15A fuse should be ok given this setup (this is what I have read, based on the 110W total and 12V). I am not sure why I am blowing the 15A fuse. Did I miss something with how I wired it up?

Any help would be much appreciated, thanks. Again, pls don't laugh, I am an electrical noob!

Turns out the black wire on the headlight was positive, and the blue was negative. Black wire is positive, of course! Makes so much sense :P Well the lights are working now at least... Now it's time to get some turn signals on there and some mirrors wouldn't be a bad idea either...

Quote from Michael Denham :

and blew the 10A fuse for the headlight. So I replaced it with a 15A fuse

Bad, bad, bad idea. Only replace a fuse with one of equal value. Otherwise you could start a fire or melt insulation off depending on the gauge of wiring.

blah blah blah it will be fine you big girl

Quote from wheel4hummer :

Bad, bad, bad idea. Only replace a fuse with one of equal value. Otherwise you could start a fire or melt insulation off depending on the gauge of wiring.

Well from what I've read it's very common for people to replace the 10A with a 15A when they replace the headlights on bikes. The stock headlights are 55W each, and so are the ones I replaced them with, so they shouldn't be drawing any more current than the stock ones... it's just that apparently if your battery is not well charged, and the voltage gets a little low you can blow the 10A fuse. 15A should stop that. But really, same wattage as the stock headlights, it should be fine...

Quote from Michael Denham :

Well from what I've read it's very common for people to replace the 10A with a 15A when they replace the headlights on bikes. The stock headlights are 55W each, and so are the ones I replaced them with, so they shouldn't be drawing any more current than the stock ones...

Well I meant in wiring in general. Specific cases might be different.

Fair enough. I just thought I'd give you the specifics of my situation!