I thought I would fit a set of daylight running lights to the patrol, as I don’t like running with my lights on all the time, but I do recognise that you are a lot more noticeable with a light showing in the daytime. Reading up on the legalities of the system, it appears that the running lights must turn off when your headlights are on, even though I have seen many cars at night with both showing. Anyway, I don’t want to attract the attention of the police I figured I would wire them as per the book so to speak.
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I purchased a kit and installed it according to instructions. Great, the lights came on with the ignition and went off when the park lights were turned on. This was good for 10 days.
Started up to go home from work on Wednesday and noticed that only the right light was working. Figured it was a loose wire or something so decided to check it out when I got home. Half way home, pulled up behind another car and noticed (in the reflection on his boot) the left light was flashing intermittently. By the time I got home it had gone out completely and there was a burning smell coming from under the bonnet. Opened the bonnet and found the control box supplied in the kit had melted. Checked my wiring was correct and headed for the shop I bought it from.
Installed the new kit and off we went again. I did notice that the control box did get pretty hot though and asked the shop I bought the kit from if this was normal. Got a bit of a story about the kit being for cold climates and that they had had a few that had failed like mine.
As I had already spent a fair bit of time on this, tapping into my wiring harness, running wires to the lights and drilling holes in the roo bar, I decided to stay with the lights but to go back to a less high tech system.
I removed the controller and replaced it with a standard normally closed auto relay. I wired the lights through the normally closed contact to switched battery picked up from the windscreen wiper harness. When the ignition is on the lights come on. I then ran a wire from the park light battery to one side of the coil and earthed the other side of the coil. Turn on park lights, the relay operates and turns the running lights off.
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All works Ok and the relay does not get as hot as the control box used to.
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