Thanks tkrussell, I'm going to Home Depot to get the shim, and I'll give it another try.

 

Well I could not find that shim at Home Depot; tried one more time with a screwdriver, no joy. Then I realized, if I cut the wire it's easy to reverse anytime with one of those wire connectors. In fact for me it's probably easier than it would be trying to get the connector/wire back into the relay socket.

So that's what I did, snipped the wire midway between the bottom of the relay box and where it's taped into the big cable group, put a bit of tape on both ends, and it works great.

I dislike DRLs anyway, but particularly on the RX they annoy me because they are very bright and very yellow. In the daytime it looks like you're driving with headlamps on, and because they're so yellow it looks like you don't have xenons.

Anyway thank you tkrussell and all others on these forums. Apart from being interesting to read, I have had my RX 1 month now and thanks to help here and a couple of other websites I now have the NAV fix to enter destinations while on the move, my car's phonebook loaded with my names/numbers, and now the DRLs disabled.

 

I don't personally like DRL's so I wanted to disable them, but I also wanted the option of easily re-enabling them if necessary. For my solution, I decided to install a round flush-mount switch on the bottom of the relay housing itself (the part that detaches from the bottom and pulls away from the wiring harness). The relay housing plastic is soft and very easy to cut. After pushing the switch in to the new hole and positioning it so that the wires going to the switch are closest to the outside edge (to clear the wires going to the bottom of the relays), I cut the primary white & black wire equidistant and stripped & tinned both ends. The flush mount switch only protrudes into the bottom of the fuse box by abour 1/2" to 3/4" of an inch - plenty of room.

Next, I used some white wire I had of the same gauge and soldered two 6-inch lengths to the switch. I used adhesive-lined heat-shrink tubing to seal the soldering work. I then stripped & tinned the other ends of these wires. Next, I soldered one of the white wires coming from the switch to the end of the wire I cut from the original wire that had the matching female spade terminal (the part that snaps in place inside the relay box). I used heat shrink tubing to seal this splice as well. (You can actually do this soldering away from the car because the female spade terminal presses-in from the bottom of the relay block making it very easy to reattach later.)

Finally, I soldered the remaining free white wire from the switch to the white & black end that goes into the wiring harness loom and sealed it with heat shrink tubing. I then took the female spade terminal and pushed it back into its position in the relay connector until it clicked (locked) in place. I folded the wires into the box and snapped the relay fuse box bottom back onto the center base of the relay box, re-installed the fuses, tested the lights and reassembled the housing in the engine.

The result was awesome. The switch is out of the way and yet easy to get to if necessary and virtually invisble. If you ever had a light problem and needed Lexus to troubleshoot it, they would never even know this tiny switch was there because it's small, flush-mounted and virtually invisible from the top.

You might consider this kind of solution if you don't have a need to activate/disable the DRL's from inside the car.

The only small problem this solution has is that you will have to take off the plastic engine housing covering the relay box to be able to get to the switch - but that's it!

Let me know if you need more guidance than I provided here. Also, thanks very much to TKRussell for the original, very detailed instructions. If you're not a technical writer, you should be :-)

Sonartech
Monroe, WA

 

Thanks Sonartech, sounds like a good solution if you need to get the DRLs working again easily, but if I tried that I think I might set fire to the engine compartment

As I said in an earlier post I just snipped the wire and put tape on the ends, but it can be easily reversed with one of those tiny sleeve connectors if required. By the way I agree tkrussell should be a technical writer.

Anybody else had an of issue of driving at night without lights? Because of the way the instruments are permanently lit up, I have forgotten to switch the headlights on a few times.

 

Thanks!!!

Doing this mod this week

 

Does anyone know if Lexus will continue to honor our extended warranty if we disable the DRLs? or will dealer do the work & honor the warranty? I emailed our salesman on 4/17 with this question but have received no answer as yet.

 

why? unless you are a mobster sneaking up at night to whack somebody

 

They can and may deny your electrical and headlight warranty since you are doing an electrical modification. They can't deny other parts of your warrany though. If you are worried about it, you could always just hook the DRL back up when you take it to the dealer for service.

 

Anybody tried removing the DRL bulbs, versus disabling the relay? (do without high beams I guess)

 

Let me get this straight, we need to remove this "target" wire from the contacts and if needed, it can be put back.

Or else, terminate and tape.

Or can you cut the wire and tape? Or else, perhaps, connect extensions of the wire and put a switch? Or now you have the option of of Off-On? Will this work?

 

so dumb how lexus doesnt let you do anything with the car

 

You gotthat right! They seem to assume that you are happy with what you have and will not ask for anything more. On the contrary...

 

just like how they released the IS350 the first year without a way to disable the traction control.

 

I tried but failed. Maybe I am doing something wrong. First of all the relay box in the RX400H is not rectangular. The were a few things inside that looked like they might be relays and I pulled them out one at a time till I got LH High Beam is ON, and the RH High Beam is OFF. I also got a warning message that gave a VSH or VHS or something with a V and two other letters in it. Before I went any further and started to remove or cut wires I wrapped the middle post of the relay with an insulator tape to see what would happen. I wound up getting the VXX warning again and when I drove the car around the block the brakes felt funny. It felt as if the Regenerative brakes weren't doing anything. Do I remove the correct relay? The one that I pulled and taped was green.

 

I got it done. It took a few tries to find the correct relay and I had a hard time removing the plug. It would have been easier to cut the wire but I would rather not cut any wires. Now all I need to do is get the NAV to work while the car is moving and I will have the perfect car