Increasing head lights output (full LED setup)

[IllusionX]

Originally Posted by David C

The DRL relay is simply a triac in serie of a parallel ground of the low beam that takes about 3.5v off the line. Since I have LED's everywhere on the low and high, no point in running them at a lesser voltage. Much easier to just disconnect the relay and wire in the parking lights or any other light from an ignition circuit, so you still get DRL whenever the key is on run even without the engine running, but you don't necessarily get stuck with headlight power when you want to drive around quietly (like drive in theaters or outdoor exhibits). And it's quite a bitch to wire anything to that DRL harness due to its location and how short the harness is. In my case Im happy with the way it is after giving it much thoughts. However I picked up high amp diodes to have a parallel ground for the LED light bars and the foglights on a switch on the dashboard, so I can turn them on independently of the high/low beams too.

Huh? Last time I measure the voltage out of the DRL at the H4 harness, I was getting 12v.

I was like, fine, connect the blue wire to the orange wire of the fogs, then fog relay started flicker. A small cap solved the issue.

I believe you also lose the parking brake light on the dash when you remove the module.
Oh yeah, I can also control my fogs independently from the headlights as long as the DRL works. :)

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[David C]

Originally Posted by IllusionX

Huh? Last time I measure the voltage out of the DRL at the H4 harness, I was getting 12v.

I was like, fine, connect the blue wire to the orange wire of the fogs, then fog relay started flicker. A small cap solved the issue.

I believe you also lose the parking brake light on the dash when you remove the module.
Oh yeah, I can also control my fogs independently from the headlights as long as the DRL works.

Sent from my SM-G930W8 using Tapatalk

In your case you had factory foglight, so you have a dedicated switch and relay, harness, etc. I don't, so it's a user install and I have to wire them with power, ground and control. So I chose to use the constant 12v from the headlight and the controlled ground of the low beam.

When I measured the voltage at the H4 connector on passenger side, with the driver side halogen bulb in, passenger side bulb out, engine off, key out, lights to off, I was getting 12v to a ground point from all 3 wires and 0v between each. With the lights on to "head", I'm getting 12v from main to low and 12v from main to ground point, 0v from main to high. With the engine running and light to off, I was getting 11v between main and low, 14v from main to ground, 14v from high to ground, 0v from main to high and 3v from low to ground. My true RMS meter was giving me 3v DC or 5v AC and a 50hz frequency, which shows the pulsing effect. Since the LED units use their own driver to stabilize current and voltage, I didn't deemed a good practice to add a non linear load in series with the LED drivers. Of course a capacitor would help smooth the pulsing, but I don't want to be running the headlights all the time now when the parking lights do just fine. However I might wire the fog ground to the headlight switch stack so they come on when I switch to tail and then the headlight join in when I go to head.

Parking brake light is always on anyway since I have the abs light too.

So in my case it's fine the way it is.