We'll start this with the standard disclaimer: This is a modification made to our car. The following article shows you how this was done. You alone take full responsibility for any modification you make to your own car.
After having many cars pull out in front of us, seemingly not seeing our low-slung DSM, I wanted to have some lights to help us be seen. When I remembered, I would turn on the parking lights, but often I would forget, until some moron pulled a stupid move.
I'm not generally a fan of Daytime Running Lights (DRL), but with all the work that goes into our cars, an insurance check and a body shop are not going to get us our cars back using today's Book values. So, I decided that the coolest I could make DRLs look, would be to run the fog lights alone.
Here is the diagram of how to wire your fog lights for DRLs, without running your parking or headlights. The best part is, you can still override the fogs to stay off, by turning off the dash fog light switch.
Here is the diagram of how I wired the circuit. You will need a 12vdc automotive relay -- generally handles 30Amps or more --, some heavy gauge wire, and several spade crimp connectors. We also bought the socket for the relay so that we could wire it up and solder the connections, and then simply plug the relay into the base, in case we ever need to replace the relay at some future date.
The power to run the fog lamps comes from the battery connection. The power is not applied to the fog lamps unless there is power to the Radio fuse. We were careful about several things:
1) The connection to the Radio fuse is on the "Supply" side of the fuse, so that the power to run the relay was not passing through the Radio fuse itself.
2) The connection to the Fog Lamps fuse is on the "To Switch" side of the fuse. This runs the power through the dash switch so that it can be overridden for the Fog Lamps to remain off.
Here are the pictures of the actual install. You can see the grounding connection with the blue crimp eyelet on it:
The exposed portion of the wiring was wrapped in loom cover and sealed with electrical tape to help keep out the elements. The relay was attached right next to the fuse panel to keep the wire runs short.
I had to notch the cover for the wires to exit, but you can see it makes for a stock-looking appearance:
Now we can drive and always have some lights on the front to help drivers see us who might have looked right over the top of us before. If we need to idle the car, or run the engine for any reason that's not driving, we can punch the Fog Lamp switch and turn the DRLs off.
After having many cars pull out in front of us, seemingly not seeing our low-slung DSM, I wanted to have some lights to help us be seen. When I remembered, I would turn on the parking lights, but often I would forget, until some moron pulled a stupid move.
I'm not generally a fan of Daytime Running Lights (DRL), but with all the work that goes into our cars, an insurance check and a body shop are not going to get us our cars back using today's Book values. So, I decided that the coolest I could make DRLs look, would be to run the fog lights alone.
Here is the diagram of how to wire your fog lights for DRLs, without running your parking or headlights. The best part is, you can still override the fogs to stay off, by turning off the dash fog light switch.
Here is the diagram of how I wired the circuit. You will need a 12vdc automotive relay -- generally handles 30Amps or more --, some heavy gauge wire, and several spade crimp connectors. We also bought the socket for the relay so that we could wire it up and solder the connections, and then simply plug the relay into the base, in case we ever need to replace the relay at some future date.
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The power to run the fog lamps comes from the battery connection. The power is not applied to the fog lamps unless there is power to the Radio fuse. We were careful about several things:
1) The connection to the Radio fuse is on the "Supply" side of the fuse, so that the power to run the relay was not passing through the Radio fuse itself.
2) The connection to the Fog Lamps fuse is on the "To Switch" side of the fuse. This runs the power through the dash switch so that it can be overridden for the Fog Lamps to remain off.
Here are the pictures of the actual install. You can see the grounding connection with the blue crimp eyelet on it:
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
The exposed portion of the wiring was wrapped in loom cover and sealed with electrical tape to help keep out the elements. The relay was attached right next to the fuse panel to keep the wire runs short.
I had to notch the cover for the wires to exit, but you can see it makes for a stock-looking appearance:
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
Now we can drive and always have some lights on the front to help drivers see us who might have looked right over the top of us before. If we need to idle the car, or run the engine for any reason that's not driving, we can punch the Fog Lamp switch and turn the DRLs off.