I've been toying with the idea of daylight running lights for a while now, and have done a fair bit of research to try and find the best looking and most reliable type.
Look on Ebay, and you'll find dozens at all sorts of prices, anyway in the end having done a lot of reading I decided upon Philips. Having had hub dynamo powered Philips LED had and tail lights on my bike which have performed brilliantly ( every pun intended ) and the fact that all the streetlights where I live have been replaced with Philips LED lighting, thought they'd be a safe bet.
They make several types, and I had initially decided upon the "Daylight 8" which dim rather than turn off when the sidelights are switched on, however not being too sure of the legality in the UK of having 2 sets of sidelights ( they recommend replacing the normal sidelight bulbs with dummies, something I didn't really want to do ) and the fact that these came out in 2010, I finally decided on the "Daylight 9" ( introduced 2014 ) which switch off completely when the sidelights
are on.
These are not exactly cheap compared with some of the Ebay "bargains" but it's a job I want to last, so thought it worth wile paying the extra.
Prices in the UK vary from £105, to the cheapest I could find which was Amazon at £75, however they're on sale in Germany for £54 with about £5 postage.
Needless to say I ordered them from Germany, and 2 days later they were delivered.
The obvious place to fit them was on the foglight covers, the lights come with metal mounts which are designed to be fitted into a grill, with the lights snapping into the mount. All well and good if there's a suitable grill, the one on the EOS is far to small and wouldn't look right or be legal as far as the spacing of the lights goes. ( 600mm minimum between the lights )
I really didn't want to have the dris protruding from the front of the foglight covers, preferring to flush mount them.
I firstly made a cardboard template by trial and error until I had the right aperture to accept the light ( they taper slightly being a bit wider at the front than the back, so the size of the aperture is critical to not have the light sticking out too much, or pulling right through.
I used the card template to mark the cover with a felt pen, then carefully cut out the aperture, firstly with a small cutting disk, and then a hacksaw blade. Finally filing to the finished size. I decided on the lower of the two positions, which still meets the minimum legal (European) height of 250mm.
After which the light could just be pushed through from the front, leaving about 5mm protruding.
There are two M5 threaded holes on the rear of each light, so it was a simple manor to fabricate U shaped brackets out of aluminium to secure the lights into the cover.
The lights come with 3M of wire on the right one and 2M on the left, more than enough to route them through to the control box.
Bearing in mind that the covers will at some stage have to be removed for replacing foglight bulbs, I thought it prudent to bundle up about 50cm of wire with a tie wrap to the rear of the lamp to facilitate easy removal of the cover in future.
The wiring couldn't be easier, there's a small electronic control box which senses the voltage across the battery, so there's no need for switches. There are three waterproof connectors on the box, one for each of the lights and one for the power connections, simply a red fused wire which goes to battery pos, a black one to battery neg, a blue wire which also goes to battery neg, unless the car has start/stop technology, in which case it goes to vcc on the fusebox ( mine hasn't so went the battery neg)
There's also an orange wire which shuts off the lights when it "sees" 12volts this is connected by a scotch lock type connect to the sidelight wire on the headlight unit.
The hard bit was to find somewhere to put the control box, although being small, space is at a premium. I finally decided to secure it to the air filter box, so had to make a suitable bracket out of aluminium.
The instructions recommended that the car's battery be disconnected before making any connections, I was a bit dubious about this in case I lost the radio connection, not being sure if the radio code I have works. Anyway, I did as was suggested, and there wasn't a problem, however, when I re-connected the battery and started the engine, several of the warning lights stayed on, this I was expecting having seen something in the manual about it.
Anyway, after a 100 metre drive, they all went out again much to my relief!
As for the lights, they worked perfectly, came on as soon as the engine started, and extinguished when the sidelights are switched on. When the engine is turned off, there's a couple of seconds delay before they go out again.
Quite pleased with the visual results, though don't know whether they'd have looked better on the upper section of the covers, ( I was a bit worried of close proximity to the towing f eye )
I was a little disappointed initially with the brightness of the lights, as can be seen by the picture above, however when you get down really low and look at them they're very very bright. Looking at the angle of them they're pointing slightly downwards, and putting a piece of paper in front of them, there's a very clean cutoff at about the height of the top of the lights, I'll heave to remove the panels and modify the mounts to angle them up a bit, as they're definitely pointing at the road, as can be seen in the pic below which I've just taken now that it's dark and easier to see exactly whats happening.
I hope this may be of some help to anyone who's contemplating a similar job.
Pete
Look on Ebay, and you'll find dozens at all sorts of prices, anyway in the end having done a lot of reading I decided upon Philips. Having had hub dynamo powered Philips LED had and tail lights on my bike which have performed brilliantly ( every pun intended ) and the fact that all the streetlights where I live have been replaced with Philips LED lighting, thought they'd be a safe bet.
They make several types, and I had initially decided upon the "Daylight 8" which dim rather than turn off when the sidelights are switched on, however not being too sure of the legality in the UK of having 2 sets of sidelights ( they recommend replacing the normal sidelight bulbs with dummies, something I didn't really want to do ) and the fact that these came out in 2010, I finally decided on the "Daylight 9" ( introduced 2014 ) which switch off completely when the sidelights
are on.
These are not exactly cheap compared with some of the Ebay "bargains" but it's a job I want to last, so thought it worth wile paying the extra.
Prices in the UK vary from £105, to the cheapest I could find which was Amazon at £75, however they're on sale in Germany for £54 with about £5 postage.
Needless to say I ordered them from Germany, and 2 days later they were delivered.
The obvious place to fit them was on the foglight covers, the lights come with metal mounts which are designed to be fitted into a grill, with the lights snapping into the mount. All well and good if there's a suitable grill, the one on the EOS is far to small and wouldn't look right or be legal as far as the spacing of the lights goes. ( 600mm minimum between the lights )
I really didn't want to have the dris protruding from the front of the foglight covers, preferring to flush mount them.
I firstly made a cardboard template by trial and error until I had the right aperture to accept the light ( they taper slightly being a bit wider at the front than the back, so the size of the aperture is critical to not have the light sticking out too much, or pulling right through.
I used the card template to mark the cover with a felt pen, then carefully cut out the aperture, firstly with a small cutting disk, and then a hacksaw blade. Finally filing to the finished size. I decided on the lower of the two positions, which still meets the minimum legal (European) height of 250mm.
After which the light could just be pushed through from the front, leaving about 5mm protruding.
There are two M5 threaded holes on the rear of each light, so it was a simple manor to fabricate U shaped brackets out of aluminium to secure the lights into the cover.
The lights come with 3M of wire on the right one and 2M on the left, more than enough to route them through to the control box.
Bearing in mind that the covers will at some stage have to be removed for replacing foglight bulbs, I thought it prudent to bundle up about 50cm of wire with a tie wrap to the rear of the lamp to facilitate easy removal of the cover in future.
The wiring couldn't be easier, there's a small electronic control box which senses the voltage across the battery, so there's no need for switches. There are three waterproof connectors on the box, one for each of the lights and one for the power connections, simply a red fused wire which goes to battery pos, a black one to battery neg, a blue wire which also goes to battery neg, unless the car has start/stop technology, in which case it goes to vcc on the fusebox ( mine hasn't so went the battery neg)
There's also an orange wire which shuts off the lights when it "sees" 12volts this is connected by a scotch lock type connect to the sidelight wire on the headlight unit.
The hard bit was to find somewhere to put the control box, although being small, space is at a premium. I finally decided to secure it to the air filter box, so had to make a suitable bracket out of aluminium.
The instructions recommended that the car's battery be disconnected before making any connections, I was a bit dubious about this in case I lost the radio connection, not being sure if the radio code I have works. Anyway, I did as was suggested, and there wasn't a problem, however, when I re-connected the battery and started the engine, several of the warning lights stayed on, this I was expecting having seen something in the manual about it.
Anyway, after a 100 metre drive, they all went out again much to my relief!
As for the lights, they worked perfectly, came on as soon as the engine started, and extinguished when the sidelights are switched on. When the engine is turned off, there's a couple of seconds delay before they go out again.
Quite pleased with the visual results, though don't know whether they'd have looked better on the upper section of the covers, ( I was a bit worried of close proximity to the towing f eye )
I was a little disappointed initially with the brightness of the lights, as can be seen by the picture above, however when you get down really low and look at them they're very very bright. Looking at the angle of them they're pointing slightly downwards, and putting a piece of paper in front of them, there's a very clean cutoff at about the height of the top of the lights, I'll heave to remove the panels and modify the mounts to angle them up a bit, as they're definitely pointing at the road, as can be seen in the pic below which I've just taken now that it's dark and easier to see exactly whats happening.
I hope this may be of some help to anyone who's contemplating a similar job.
Pete