Daylight Running Fog Light Modification

This is a how-to to help you configure your lights so that only your Fog Lights remain on when you turn on the ignition. This modification enables your Ford Focus to have the same lighting characteristics as a Nissan Murano, and Dodge SX during the day. Normally when you turn on the ignition on your un-modified Ford Focus the headlights will turn on, activating the low beam filaments under less power, and hence it complies with Ministry of Transportation of Ontario’s (MTO) guidelines. Which states that all late model vehicles produced must have daytime running lights (DRL’s).

Any modifications to your car are AT YOUR OWN RISK. You should consult the owner's manual and service manual. You should also contact your car's manufacturer to determine what effects modifications may have on your safety, warranty, performance, etc. Please also contact your local city, provincial, state, and national authorities to determine whether your intended modifications will make your car compliant with the roads you travel on.

Now, let’s get started.

Step 1: The Materials

1 pair of scissors 1 pair of wire crimpers 1 pair of wire strippers
3 ‘male’ connectors 6” of 8-12 gage wire A roll of electrical Tape
1 exact-o knife

All of these supplies can be purchased at your local hardware or electronics store. A wire stripper is not necessary for this modification, as your pair of scissors should do the job just as well.

Step 2: Getting Started

Take your piece of 6 inch 8-12 gage wire and cut it into two 2-3” pieces with your pair of scissors. Now, take your wire stripper (or your pair of scissors) and strip off either end of the two wires exposing the leads. This should not take a long time, this took me about 1 min, mainly because I was working very slowly.

Step 3: Modifying the connectors

This step may take a little more, this step took me about 3 minutes for each connector. You need to cut off the plastic casing enclosing the wire connector in order for it to plug into the fuse box (explained later on) using your exact-o knife. This does not need to be precise, but try to cut as the plastic right where it begins to bend out, as this will assist you later on during the process.

Step 4: Setting up the wiring

Before crimping the wires to the wire connectors, do a trial-run to see that the wires will fit into the connectors first. They should look like this, before crimping.

Step 5: Crimping

You can now crimp the two wires first, by crimping one connector to each wire that you cut out in Step 2. Try to crimp the connectors as hard as you can to ensure a tight seal between the wire and the wire connector.

Step 6: Crimping Continued

Now you can take the remaining wire connector and plug it into both leads that are unplugged. Plugging the wires into the one wire connector may take a bit more effort, since the wire connector is only designed for only one wire. You can go out and get a larger connector, but that isn’t necessary. Just crimp one wire into the wire connector first (doesn’t matter which one), just make sure that there is wire still exposed inside the opening of the wire connector. Once that is secure you can slide the second wire into the opening of the wire connector and crimp the opening of the connector. Now both wires should be touching, which will ensure a good connection.

Step 7: Apply Electrical Tape

Now that the connection is secure you should wrap the wire connectors and the wire with electrical tape to ensure that no moisture enters the connection. Even though this should be water tight inside the fuse box, it doesn’t do any harm just to be safe.

Step 8: Remove relay R-12 and R-13

Now pop open the hood of your car, and locate the fuse box. This black box should be located on the driver’s side of the car to the left of the suspension housing. It is held closed by 2 clips, undo the 2 clips by sliding your fingers under the clips and pull toward you and up. Now you will see a set of fuses. On the bottom side of the fuse box lid there is a diagram of where relay R-12 and R-13 are located. Pull these two out. It takes some effort to pull them out, just be patient and keep pulling them, they will come out. It took me about 10 minutes to pull the fuses out, they were really tight on my car.

Step 9: Plug in your wiring harness

Plug in your wiring harness that you made. It was necessary to remove the plastic casing from the connectors otherwise it would be impossible for the wiring harness to slide into the fuse outlet. This picture is taken from the driver side fender looking into the car. Make sure your connectors are in there snuggly and that they won’t wobble in and out of place.

Step 10: Finishing up

Make sure your fuses that you removed aren’t under the hood, I made this mistake and I had to re-open the hood and retrieve them. Close the fuse box, close the hood. Now watch the light show.

Here are some pictures of my car.

The first picture is just with the fog lights. This should be how it looks like when you turn the ignition to the ‘ON’ position.

The second picture shows the fog lights on along with the low beams. You need to pull the light knob toward you inside the car as you normally would to activate the fog lights

The third picture shows the fog lights on along with the high beams. Note that on a factory Focus the fog lights turn off when you hit the high beams. This modification bypasses this feature.

Enjoy!

Kevin Choi and Paul Ruscio from OFOC