Removed all 18 pins from the connector and wired up my new connections.





I modified the fog light relay to allow operation independent of the low beams while retaining the high beam cut feature. I accomplished this by removing pin 86 from the relay and installing a new pin wired to a distro box linked to post 75x.

Here you can see the old pin removed.



New wire installed. Normally I would shrink tube over the mismatched wire color but in this case I left some yellow exposed for later clarity if needed. In order to remove the original pin and install the new one I clipped the side of purple pin retainer.



I taped up the exposed connector and zip tied it back on the harness before reinstalled the plug and relay. This is totally reversible and not a permanent modification, simply pull the new wire out and throw the old one back in place.



Finished wiring up the relay plug's harness. I ended up having to extend the ground wires as I cut them too short, whoops. I grounded the relays right next to the fuse box.





And installed! This was quite a satisfying moment. Doesn't get more OEM than this.





Tomorrow I will hook the relays into the headlight circuit and start testing functionality. If everything goes well I'll have it buttoned up tomorrow!

 

That looks great. I may have to barrow that idea for my DRL circuit. For now the relays are just hanging out in the rain tray and I never liked that solution. Now I need to find some OEM relay holders. Too bad I just scrapped out my parts car...

 

Thanks! I can grab you some next time I go to the junkyard and send them your way.

 

I may have to take you up on that.

Later on today I'm hopefully going to pick up an LCD cluster to swap into my car. I may need some of your expertise on that. You seem pretty good at taking your interior apart.

 

No problem. I've had a bit of experience doing it now. What kind of cluster swap are you doing?

 

Mine is 99.5 non-LCD and I'm picking up a cluster from a 98 with LCD.

I had thought about getting a 00+ cluster so the oil temp gauge will work. I think that may cause more problems than it will solve though.

 

Yeah I know the swap to a 2000+ cluster isn't the simplest. I should be able to help with the swap to an LCD cluster. MetalMan really helped me out when I was doing my swap as well.

Anddddd everything works! The headlight relays fired up correctly the first time, the independent fogs took a bit more work. Simply replacing the headlight wire going into the fog relay wasn't sufficient. This is because the fog light switch still wasn't receiving power when the headlight switch was off. The solution was to supply switched, fused power to the fog light switch in lieu of the headlight switch power.

It took quite a bit of sleuthing in the Bentley to trace the proper wires and decipher the circuitry but I now have fully independent fogs while retaining the high beam cut feature and automatic activation of the front fogs when the rear fog is turned on (not that I would ever use this feature.)

My setup for soldering the relays into the harness.





Driver's side done.



Passenger side completed.



My new power distribution block running off the 75x post. I have it zip tied to the knee bolster frame. This was the best location I could find that wouldn't interfere with the cluster while still being out of the way. Sorry for the crappy photos.





Center console pulled out to access the fog light switch plug.



Grey and green pin pulled. This is the pin that was supplying power to the fog light switch. Like I did on the fog light relay, I shrink tubed over the old connector and zip tied it out of the way. After clipping the purple pin retainer I slipped the old pin out and the new one into place. The beauty of this method is that it is completely reversible, no cutting of the factory harness was required.



Still need to finish hard wiring my iPhone charger and GPS charger, then I'll button it up.

 

Anddd my car broke down. I'm currently waiting for a tow truck on Treasure Island just outside of SF.

I was on the bridge and got a single misfire, didn't think anything of it and kept driving. Then boom, misfires galore killing the engine. I pull over as much as I can and get it started with some gas pedal mashing. It wasn't happy about it though.

I've got the knee bolster off and can hear the problem. The engine will fire up and within 5-10 seconds it will start to misfire along with a rapid clicking of a relay. I'm thinking the load reduction relay only because I can't think what else is connected directly to the motor like that. Pulling the fog light relay and new headlight relays I installed did not stop the clicking, misfiring, and shutdown of the motor.

Joy.

 

my goodness id go crazy looking at that mess. haha nice work

 

I can't imagine that the electrical work you performed had much to do with the misfires. My experience with electrical issues has been that if there is going to be trouble, it happens right away. I hope you can get it figured out. Were you able to scan for codes?