2020 TRD off-road LED drl's

1st post here. Hoping someone with better electrical experience can assist..

Purchased a set of raptor lights from a well known company in our community (still going back & forth with them on this issue, so I'm not going to put them on blast, but it's not looking promising so far)

I followed this companies youtube installation video exactly and it went smooth and the lights worked as promised.
(Their method is a common ground and to incorporate a add-a-fuse to a specific headlight fuse under the hood so the raptor lights come on with the headlights only).

Shortly after the installation however, my daytime running lights completly stopped working. They won't turn on under any circumstance.
the other lights work, however I noticed that when the headlights are on, the led drl section comes on, but at clearly half brightness It was before...Very dim.

I tried many things to troubleshoot this including: Taking the add-a-fuse out and putting everything thing back as it was before; checking every fuse, checking the drl relay, using a test probe on all the ports to check for current, researching several owners fourms, checking ebrake, lightning settings in head unit, etc - All of which with negative results.

Wanted to avoid taking it in to Toyota if at all possible, due to the amount. Of tear down I would have to do as to prep it for "warranty" work. Does anyone have any other ideas or suggestions?

2020 TRD off-road /w low miles

 

Have you supplied 12v to the lights themselves? Maybe they are buggered. Wouldn't surprise me, seems that most aftermarket electrical accessories are total junk. Either that or it's your truck telling you it's not a Raptor. Lol!

Edit: Sorry, for some reason I thought it was the Raptor lights that weren't working. I'd remove the Raptor lights and trouble shoot the voltage to the drl circuit. You could have a bad connection somewhere. Did you touch any of the drl wiring?

 

I am pretty sure (not 100% sure) the factory LED DRL's dim when the headlights are turned on,,,but how dim is hard to say.
I'd remove all those doodads, get back to stock, and start over.

 

I did - And the lights are still completely out. The fuse location for the drls have a good fuse and are getting power. Just wondering if they (the leds) are fried somehow, or if there is something I'm not correctly checking.

 

Update:
Sorry for the late reply. E-brake was the issue - Not sure if something in the chain was sticking or what, but they (DRLs) began to work shortly after this post.
Only theory is the prior owner never used the e-brake, where I use it frequently. Perhaps a component needed cycling IDK.

 

Parking brake has to be down before DRL will kick on. Once the brake is down, the lights will stay on regardless of the brake position until the ignition is cycled.

 

I knew that as stated in the thread. The DRLs were not working before regardless of parking brake manipulation.

 

I will second the comment that the DRLs will go to half brightness when the headlights are turned on. I am not sure why other than maybe something to do with heat or power draw, but regardless it dims with the headlights so that part is normal.

 

It's because they go from being a "DRL" to being a "parking lamp". The DRLs dimming at night time are turning into what used to be the dim side of the amber parking lamp/turn signal bulbs from long ago.

Don't want DRL levels of brightness at night because it will blind people also.

 

Makes sense. Although those DRLs are definitely not going to blind anyone any more than your headlights would. DRLs are intentionally dimmer than headlights, generally.

 

They are brighter than headlights because they are an unfocused light meant to grab attention during the day. Headlights are focused and unless adjusted poorly, shouldn’t be blinding…headlights are not very bright to look at during the day.

It's difficult to really confirm any of that during the day or night though because you can't get the DRL to come on at night once auto headlights kick on.

 

If you take it off of Auto and just put the parking lights on, the DRLs will be at full power. They're bright, but not headlight bright. At least in my opinion. But I do agree with your assessment that it's unfocused light designed to grab attention. I will admit it is entirely possible you're correct about the lighting output and I'm going off of DRLs for vehicles that don't have LEDs, which are just dimmer versions of the normal lights. You can see the difference at night with those as some people will forget that their headlights aren't actually on, especially in city settings.

 

The low beam, above the cutoff, is actually pretty dim (lux). Many DRLs, especially when oncoming cars are closer, will have light intensity that is greater than that of the low beam above the cutoff. Now take and add the low beam AND the drl and it can be enough to be distracting to oncoming traffic.
-I want to figure out how to have a switch that flashes the high beams AND the full-bright DRLs for the OEM LEDs since there are so many twerps around my area with PNP LEDs in old foggy reflector housings.

No kidding on the folks that don't know their headlights are on. Not to long ago I passed some old lady barreling down the highway at 65mph in the rain, in the dark. All she had on were the DRLs and didn't know it, probably thought she had auto-headlights and didn't ever even turn her headlights on.

 

Yeah, me saying "blinding" is probably a bit over the top, and all DRLs are different. You are correct that putting it in parking lamp mode with fogs turned off gives you the DRL brightness at night. It is not THAT bright, but is a bit uncomfortable to look at. Some vehicles, like current and last few years of Silverados, are pretty dim, yet they disable the DRL for the turn signal on the respective side.

Some vehicles, especially like Nissan Altimas or Versas it seems, drive around without their headlights and their DRL at night can be uncomfortable to look at. So yeah I think it just depends case by case.

Vehicles that run the low beam at reduced power for DRL are not bright at all, some run the high beam at reduced power and they are brighter to look at just because of the high beam pattern they're using, despite the power being lower.

 

I can agree there. The main reason aftermarket LEDs and HIDs are illegal in halogen housings is because of those cheapo LEDs that people get on places like Amazon that are not at all designed to match the filament of the halogen bulb and therefore throw a lot of glare in places it shouldn't be.

 

Probably depends a lot on the person too, but you generally have to cater to the lowest common denominator to be safe, in cases like this. I.e. people that are more affected by the sight of this than others.

I believe our 4Runner uses the high beams as the DRLs and there is a noticable difference in brightness (DRLs being dimmer). However, that uses standard halogens and has no LEDs at all and is different from the ones in the Taco.