I'm having a real hard time with doing a DRL disable on my 1995 Cavalier. I have the cluster with the tachometer.

I've cut the tan wire, as outlined in http://www.j-body.org/forums/read.php?f=7&i=326113&t=326113&p=1

but the DRL light just comes on and blinks when I put it in drive. (I have HIDs in and the ballasts don't come on with less than 12V)

So I tried, the dark blue wire (I have only one) and one of the lt.blue wires, but I'm really starting to get tired (and scared) of cutting wires randomly.

I'm not sure what to probe for, I've tested all the wires, going from park to drive and didn't see anything of interest,

I also tried wiring up a turn signal bulb on a second circuit to add a load to the bright/DRL bulb circuit (I was going to tuck it away and have it as a drone bulb, if worse came to worse), but that didn't help, I put it in drive and the drl light flashed again, the turn signal light didn't even turn on.

The only place in my city with a tec2 won't program my BCM to turn the DRLs off because it's illegal (canada), despite the fact that I have a seperate DRL circuit running.



I'm running out of ideas
HELP!!!

Did you try the "old school" method of DRL disable?

Quote:

This is a 2 part process. May require some special equipment and/or electrical knowledge. Author is not responsible for damage resulting from misread information. All info contained within current as of 01 Jan 2003.

Part 1

Behind the front bumper, in front of the radiator should be a relay. Remove plug from the relay. IMPORTANT: Jumper wires #80 and #87a (if uncertain which wire is which, stop now, plug relay back in and please do some research). Temporary method is to attatch a jumper wire to the plug and electrical tape it to prevent water leaking in. Permanent method, cut these two wires at the plug and splice them together. Don't forget heat-shrink. I end-spiced the rest seperately and removed the plug/relay all together. Failure to splice these 2 wires together will result in the passenger headlight not working properly.

Once completed, start car, release e-brake (if automatic tranny: and remove from park [reverse should work]) DRL indicator on dash should flash. If successful, move on to part 2.

Part 2

1) Remove the dash and instument cluster. A shop manual may be needed for this task, if one is not readily available, instructions can be located here.

2) Once instrument cluster is removed, CAREFULLY remove the plastic housing on the rear of the panel. Take caution not to damage the circuit board or you are out to find another instrument panel ($80-175).

3) Once the gauges are free from the circuit board, look at the back of the gauges where the idiot light filters are. Cover the DRL light (the green one) with black electrical tape. If you were like me and found the shift light annoying, go ahead and cover that one too.

4) Reassemble instrument panel and reassemble dash.

If done correctly, you should not see a green blinking light while engine is running and e-brake released (if automatic tranny: and out of park).

I got an email about your reply as I was writing this

So the tan wire is currently cut. It seems to have solved one of my problems

Before, if I turned the headlights on then put the car in drive, the DRL light would start flashing and the headlights would turn off, I'd have to turn the switch off and on, sometimes twice to get the lights to turn back on.

Now it doesn't do that, which is good, but it still blinks the DRL light.

I looked at the gauge cluster before and didn't think I could take it apart, but now it sounds like the motors just unplug from the circuit board so I'll take a look tomorrow.

Thanks.

I solved this with some tricks and luck.

I moved my DRL/Hi beam bulbs down to the fog light location. I had to drill out the housing a bit to make the bulbs fit, but once in they work fine. So those bulbs still function as DRL and Hi.

For the Hi-Beam HIDs in my actual headlights I tied into the wire for the factory DRL/Hi and used a relay to avoid voltage issues. I was having problems with the relay turning on at 6v (DRL voltage) so my HID hi beams would come on during the day and I'd have to pull up the e-brake. I tried adding resistors to bring the 6v down below the relay's pickup voltage but that was too sensitive to changes in temperature. I tried diodes as well (0.7v drop across each diode) but that was finicky as well and left me with no high beams when it was warm out.

The trick I ended up doing was using a 24 volt relay. These will turn on as low as 10v but not at 6v so the DRLs no longer trigger the relay.

So now I have:
-Functioning DRLs
-HID High beams + HID Low beams + Factory High beams all on when brights are on.
-HID Low beams always worked

I'm posting this for future reference if anyone has this problem in the future.
To get past the 6v DRL turning on your HID relay, use a 24v relay instead of a 12v relay.

canada doesnt have a law where fog lights and high beams cannot run concurrently??

I may or may not be dabbling outside the boundaries of "law" with my setup.

i just wanted that question asked so if anyone searches and finds this thread... they know in most places that is the law...

What a world we live in, I wish my 95 had drl s !

How odd. I have never heard of a 95 having DRLs before.