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Well fitted them last Sunday really, just had to get the correct relay and fuse spliced in this arvo as the electrical parts shop sold me the wrong relay to start with.
All wiring design, joining, soldering, splicing, crimping etc etc done by a mate down the road who knows his stuff, I'm completely hopeless at that sort of work!
Properly spliced into the LHS headlight wiring harness as per the factory instructions, so they come on with the ignition and go off with the parkers (sidelights) and headlights.
Two rows of six individual Cree LED "eagle eyes", mounted to home made aluminium backing plates and the plates then glued to the backs of the air intakes/nostrils, so that the eagle eyes sit in the honeycomb holes. Not all 12 are perfectly aligned in the centres of the holes, my fault for not measuring and marking precisely enough, but no-one is ever going to notice.
The camera flash makes them look a little yellow from straight on but they are 6000k bright white and are exactly what I was after.
I'm not aware of any other "classic" XFR with DRLs let alone this particular style of them.
Pics:
Nice job OZ! Sounds like a lot of work to get that done. What was your main motivator? Looks...safety? I've just never understood the appeal of DRL's.
Both looks and safety.
On most cars I see coming towards me that are fitted with proper factory DRLs, especially Mercedes, I think they look good. I also notice a car with DRLs much more easily than one without, so I want them on my car also to reduce the chances of some brain dead muppet pulling out on me, which happens all the time here in Adelaide. I reckon in the last 40 odd years of driving here I have had to take pre-emptive or avoidance action at least 100 times in respect of other road users who either didn't look at all or "looked but didn't see". The last prang I ever had was 35 years ago when a 16 year old learner driver pulled out from the kerb and turned straight across me leaving me nowhere to go.
Those look BRIGHT! I know it's hard to capture in a picture, how do they look with the headlights on at night? Does the color match the HID well?
Clean install too. Very nice.
No issue at night, as they are not on! They turn off when I turn the headlights on, this is an Australian design rule.
Edit - forgot to add, in a couple of those pics it looks like the headlights are on, but they are off, what you see is the camera flash reflecting off the projectors.
Nice touch on both sets of lights!...must look great at night....especially the air intakes...enjoy.
Still some confusion here, they are OFF at night (well, providing I turn the headlights on that is!).
One added bonus I forgot to mention.
There is a secondary engine coolant radiator behind the RHS air intake/nostril, but not behind the LHS nostril (except for Middle Eastern countries which got the "hot climate" version of the XFR which has another radiator behind this nostril, for some reason Oz never qualified as hot climate, go figure!). Instead there is a black plastic blanking plate/cover, which I had to remove so the DRL wiring on that side had somewhere to go.
I was worried that without this cover the nostril plastic mesh piece would not properly bolt back on, but it went back on perfectly.
So now I have improve airflow through the LHS nostril.
Still some confusion here, they are OFF at night (well, providing I turn the headlights on that is!).
One added bonus I forgot to mention.
There is a secondary engine coolant radiator behind the RHS air intake/nostril, but not behind the LHS nostril (except for Middle Eastern countries which got the "hot climate" version of the XFR which has another radiator behind this nostril, for some reason Oz never qualified as hot climate, go figure!). Instead there is a black plastic blanking plate/cover, which I had to remove so the DRL wiring on that side had somewhere to go.
I was worried that without this cover the nostril plastic mesh piece would not properly bolt back on, but it went back on perfectly.
So now I have improve airflow through the LHS nostril.
Ok Gotcha a now on the Lights.......More air flow the better!!! Wish I had the air intakes on mine....both look and function...would have to find a hood and match paint.
Looks good, just curious why you didn't have the dealer activate your DRLs and avoid all the extra wiring/relays? Takes then few minutes with there SDD dealer scanner
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________________ Christopher Edgett Technical Director Velocity Automotive Performance Limited 214 Maple Ave. Oliver, BC Canada V0H 1T9 Office Tel: (250) 485-5126 www.VelocityAP.com Tuning@VelocityAP.com
Looks good, just curious why you didn't have the dealer activate your DRLs and avoid all the extra wiring/relays? Takes then few minutes with there SDD dealer scanner
No such thing as factory DRLs on a "classic" XFR, not even as an option. Remember, the classic doesn't have the 2012 on (or "facelift") headlights with the built in J-blade DRLs. On other (non-XFR) "classic" XFs you could get a factory option of "blade" DRLs integrated into the chrome blades which ran across the outer/lower grilles, and you can get Chinese copies of these.
But the XFR has very different grilles/nostrils, so after-market is the only way to add DRLs to a pre-2012 XFR.
DRL's are available on the classic, I know this because there's an option in your config file for Canadian DRLs or Scandinavian DRLs, all that needs to be done is turn them in with SDD .. What you mean is there's no LEDs to turn on with the classic model..
90% of the time, the DRL's are just the high beams powered by 9V instead of 12V. Then LEDs came into play, factories started turning them on, and sometimes alongside the lower fog lights
I'm in Canada and its the law to have DRLs activated by factory..or else its illegal for the car to be sold/driven/plated, on all road vehicles past 1990.. So if it's sold in Canada, it has a factory option to activate :-)
__________________
________________ Christopher Edgett Technical Director Velocity Automotive Performance Limited 214 Maple Ave. Oliver, BC Canada V0H 1T9 Office Tel: (250) 485-5126 www.VelocityAP.com Tuning@VelocityAP.com
DRL's are available on the classic, I know this because there's an option in your config file for Canadian DRLs or Scandinavian DRLs, all that needs to be done is turn them in with SDD .. What you mean is there's no LEDs to turn on with the classic model..
90% of the time, the DRL's are just the high beams powered by 9V instead of 12V. Then LEDs came into play, factories started turning them on, and sometimes alongside the lower fog lights
I'm in Canada and its the law to have DRLs activated by factory..or else its illegal for the car to be sold/driven/plated, on all road vehicles past 1990.. So if it's sold in Canada, it has a factory option to activate :-)
Yep, understand now about NAS configurations. Nothing remotely like that on my Oz delivered XFR as far as I know. I have had access to the ISD/SDD software and an expert operator (that's how I had the XFR-S tune done), and he tweaked all sorts of setting on the car, mostly via the CCF, but there was never any mention of the possibility of activating DRLs. I suspect that the Australian Design Rules (ADRs) do not allow the NAS type of DRL operation so that CCF tweak option is not possible on my car. But maybe it is, time for Cambo to chime in!
So Cam, if my current DRL set-up craps out for some reason, is it possible to tweak the CCF on my car via SDD to enable these NAS style DRLs?
At the moment they are controlled by a "normally closed" (NC) relay so that they turn on with the ignition and off with the parkers or headlights, so having both the current DRL set-up and the NAS style DRLs at the same time seems like a non-starter, I'm just thinking of options should the current DRL set-up crap out.
Yes, I know I could manually turn the headlights on every time I start the car, but that is a bit of a pain and it would also reduce the life of the rather expensive HID globes.
Before I fitted the current DRLs I used to manually turn the parkers on every time I started the car, and use them as "virtual" DRLs. But the stock parker globes are a feeble sickly yellow, so I swapped them out for high powered SMD LEDs or Cree LEDs. Trouble is they never lasted very long and kept conking out, I've lost count of the number of times I have yanked one or both the headlight assemblies out of the car to replace the parker globes, it's gotta be over 20 times now across both XFs. To make things worse quite often the LED/Cree globe would fall apart and leave bits inside the headlight assembly that are a real PITA to get out, and right now I still have a piece left in each parker globe housing, after swapping them back for the stock yellow globes. And then there is the hassle of most of the washer fluid leaking out of the headlight washer hose every time I remove a headlight assembly, and then having to be replaced. It's all these hassles that convinced me that I needed "proper" DRLs!
If you really wanted to have Canadian or Scandanavian DRL's (they function differently) then yes it's possible to turn them on. But it's basically the same thing as turning your lights on during the day, no special DRL look like the later cars.
BUT
This can only be done with SDD, so if you change your mind, it's a bit of effort.
At least in my XJR it's an option via the touchscreen to turn them on or off. I don't think this is the case with the XF (not that i've ever checked).