DRLs install- Gen V facelift

[muzza]

Ok, purchased some Hella Ledayline 5 DRLs from eBay: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/New-Genuine- ... f1a&_uhb=1.
These can be surface or recess mounted and being genuine Hella are quality units, die cast metal bodies, black crackle paint finish and polycarbonate lenses in a weatherproof body.

On the Gen V FL I played around with where to put them, finally deciding that horizontally in the black fog recess looked best. (See pic)

First you need to pop off the plugs holding the lowerlastic panels under the bottom edges of the front bumper, in front of the wheels. Jacking the car up helps!

Mounting this kit requires drilling a couple of small holes for the bracket screws and an 11mm hole (with a bit of filing) for the plug on the light lead to fit through. (See pic)

Using the long lead (1.5m) DRL on the driver side, I just ran the lead behind the lower inner edge of the front bumper across to the passenger side.

I removed the battery for easy access to the area behind the passenger side headlight and I mounted the relay and Hella smart box on the front side of the relay/fuse box with the wires coming in from below. ( see pic)

Wiring: now this is where the Hella Asia market kit has a small problem that contravenes ADRs: in Australia the aftermarket kit DRLs need to switch off when the parkers/headlights come on, whereas OE ones can dim. Reason is that you aren't permitted to have more than one set of position lights on at once, ie the parkers, in addition to the headlights.

So, to be legal I wired in a change-over relay with diode protection, to achieve DRLs on with ignition and off when parkers/headlights turn on. (See wiring pic).

Power I grabbed from inside the fuse/relay box with a female spade connector ( as shown), earth to the bolt behind the fuse/relay box and the signal to switch the relay from the passenger side Parker wires via click connectors.

The wiring diagram shows the connections for the relay NB: make sure the Parker light +wire (yellow) goes to terminal 85 on the relay. (The Parker lights are controlled by the BCM in "auto" headlight mode so the Parker feed wire (yellow) is alway +12v and so is the return wire until the BCM earths the black/red stripe wire to turn them on when the light sensor sees low light).

This particular Hella kit's smart box detects when the ignition goes on/engine starts and turns the DRLs on automatically, it needs +12v battery voltage to detect this, in fact they turn on when you unlock the doors.(maybe sudden voltage drop triggers it?)

With the relay controlled by the Parker lights, the DRLs are normally on at all times (power goes in via the 87a terminal) until the parkers switching on closes the relay and disconnects the power to the DRLs so they turn off with the parkers/headlights coming on.

Make sure you have the in-line fuse between the power from the fuse box and the relay to the DRLs in case it goes wrong somewhere!

The DRLs have auto-switch-off via the smart box too, so they tend to remain lit for between 20-30 secs after turning off the car.

[Gen5is]

Nice write up! Looks great.

[muzza]

I have noticed that they are not as visible as i would like from the front of the car in daylight, I think this is due to the angle the fog surrounds are at, pointing toward the side of the road by 30 degrees or so from straight ahead, also the lights point down a little, again because of the fog surround panels angle.
Next I will adjust the the mounting clip angle by trimming the honeycomb plastic behind it so getting it to angle the lights up a few degrees and more straight ahead. I think I need a dremmel!

I will update the thread once done.