I had assumed before buying the Vantage that the front strips of LED's in the headlight pod stayed on all the time like Audi's, Porsches etc. I have a '13 and can't get that to happen so I assume it was not designed that way. Any way to hack/alter it to make bright daytime running lights like other premium cars? I know the BMW forum had a very active section on secret codes that could be programmed to make the car do all kinds of custom electronic stuff when I had the Z4.

 

Not quite what you are asking for, but I like to have my LEDs on also. I leave my headlight switch in the ON position, so every time I start the car my Headlight Low beam and LEDs are on, and I don't even have to think about it.

 

I never understood why if you leave the headlamp switch in the low/high beam position, it will turn on and of with the ignition; but if you leave the switch in parking lights only position, the lights will stay on all the time and drain your battery.

 

Sure, you just need one of these and re-do your wiring a bit:



You would have to get access to the LED's lamp plug and re-wire it to the controller instead of in conjunction with the headlamps as it is from the factory. You MIGHT have to run the power wires all the way to the battery behind the passenger seat. These work by sensing a voltage increase from the alternator at the battery (to my knowledge) so I'm not sure if you could simply tap into a hot lead in the engine compartment.

Once the controller is installed they will come on automatically when you start the car and shut off by themselves as well.

I had Phillips DRL kits on three of my vehicles that I installed myself, they have the same set up. Not hard to do other than perhaps the long wire run to the Aston battery (may be a workaround to this, perhaps someone knows)

 

All I do is switch the parking lights on when I start the car

 

I turn mine on when I start my car to use them as DRLs, and turn them off when I park. Kind of a hassle at first, but it's become part of my pre-drive checklist so it's routine enough that I don't think about it anymore.

 

Lots of information in this older post:

https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/...ng-lights.html

Dealer can apparently flash the ECU, but I'm not certain if both the headlights and LED's or just the LED's can be activated depending on the headlight switch position.
Perhaps our Canadian members can "shed some light" on the situation

 

The dealer update for the DRL in Canadian markets leaves the LEDs and the low beams on permanently. It's the same as actually leaving the light switch in position 2 all the time. The only difference is that in order to comply with the regulation you don't have the option to turn them off at all.

 

I had an 07 Vantage (I just bought an 09) and had Aston Works do two things -

1) a full wood interior (dash and door caps),

2) modify for the Canadian running lights.

I paid only $2500 for the burr walnut interior modifications, but $295 for the daytime 'Canadian' switch to be 'installed'. When I found out 2 weeks ago the 'switch' is simply a dealer flash I felt that Aston should have done that for free. It was petty of them to say it was a special switch replacement and charged me as such.

 

Its a useful feature - if you want to park the car on an unlit road, with some lights on, then use position 1 and they stay on. Right up to the point where they kill the battery

 

Aston's version of Canadian DRLs is to turn on all lights for driving, that's for the front and rear..yet are law is only to have running lights in the front if the vehicle at. A low intensity..

So DRLs won't help u..but u can simply wire up the LEDs to a switch...turn then on as u wish, wire them to a switch that's hot only in run, that way if u leave it on the battery won't go flat

 

I thought of leaving the parking lights on during daylight hours but that has the taillights on also which takes away from the reason I have clear taillights-so red won't show in the daylight. Also when the parking lights are on in the daylight the LED's are not very bright and wash out in the sunlight. Again, the premium brand cars have very bright LED's during daylight hours. Any way to brighten them up? Would it take new diodes or a mod to increase the voltage to the current ones?

 

I'm not keen on having the taillights on during the day, they spoil the look of the car, but it would be simple to fit a switch that isolated the rear lights so they didn't come on with the fronts.

Might have to wire in a reminder though, or you could be driving at night with no back lights

 

If you have a VH platform car with DRL's, there's no such thing as a DRL module. it's just a configuration file loaded into the CEM module that turns on the lights(keeps switch pos #2 active).


There's no tyco relay and extra wiring to make this happen..btw if your talking about that tyco relay next to the Battery jump post on the passenger side(guessing you have aV8 Vantage), that's the secondary air relay. You can remove the relay and that wiring, but will just mess up your secondary air system and flag the MIL light to turn on giving secondary air pump circuit faults.

 

If I am following Irish correctly, this is not a big deal.
Just splice a wire into the positive input for the LEDs, and wire it to a source that is hot when the ignition is on/engine running. This superceeds the positive input from the light switch.