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Camaro 2000 Daylight Running Light (DRL) disable/conversion

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Old 10-23-2009, 08:58 AM
streetrodmuscle's Avatar
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Default Camaro 2000 Daylight Running Light (DRL) disable/conversion

I live in Europe and as many more here, I bought my Camaro in the US. The original DRL turns on the orange front turn lights during daytime. It is NOT allowed to drive a car with orange lights in Europe! So a conversion was needed. I found a couple of posts on how to disable the DRL, but all of them had some complications such as Brake light turns on, or headlamps do no longer automatically turn on etc. The DRL module handles a number of functions except turning on the DRL lights, so you do not want to mess to much with that one.
Here is what I did.
1. Locate the DRL module behind the radio in the dash (It is a small black box, 10cm x 7 cm x 2 cm). (There are excellent pictures of all the mechanics on this site http://xse.com/leres/ss/drl.html )
2. Lift it up and pull out. Disconnect the two plugs from the unit so you can work on the cables.
3. Locate the bigger plug which has thicker wires than the smaller plug. Locate the light blue wire and the light blue/white wire. This is input from the turn flasher and output to the front turn lamp on left side. You need to bypass the DRL module with this signal by cutting off both wires about 2 inch from the connector and connect the remote end of these two wires together. Just temporarily twist them togeher first to check if your Left front turn light works. If so, do a permanent connection (I prefer solder with a crimp hose over). Cover each loose ends coming out from the connector with a crimp hose or electric tape. Remember that one of these wires will have a plus, so make sure it is properly isolated for a lifetime.
4. Same job for the right side front turn signals. The wires are dark blue and dark blue/white.
5. If you only want to disable the Daylight Running Lights, you can plug back the DRL module and assemble it all again.

However, not everyone wants to disable the DRL. After all it makes you more visible. Here is how I did it when I replaced my ugly original headlights with some cool Euro-style projector lights.

DRL conversion:
I found nice new front lights with projector lamps and LED halos (white) on eBay from a German source. So I wanted to use the halos as Daylight Running lights.

What you need to do then is to connect a wire from the light blue wire stub which was left on the bigger connector when you bypassed the DRL box as described above. Pull this wire thru the firewall and down to the headlamps on one side of the car. One wire is enough which you can extend to the other side headlamp. With LEDs, the power consumption is so small that you can safely connect both sides DRL LEDs to one output of the DRL module.

In europe you also need to have a white park light in front, and my new headlights had an extra row with LEDs which I could use for that, but that is just a matter of moving one wire from the original park light to the new LED, not so complicated.
Here is a picture: http://picasaweb.google.com/BoCuraca...93735985038546
 

Last edited by streetrodmuscle; 10-23-2009 at 09:02 AM. Reason: mis-spelling
  #2  
Old 10-23-2009, 04:53 PM
DarlingReject's Avatar
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Wow, I really like those headlights. I've never seen them with the extra row of LEDs on the side like that. I drive with my headlights on all the time, so I don't need to disable anything, but this is a good write-up on the how-to of it all.
 
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