LED wiring puzzle?

05COLORADO

MEMBER
2005 CHEVROLET COLORADO
2.8L
5 CYL
4WD
AUTOMATIC
175,000 MILES

Hello,

I bought a pair of LED Halo projector headlights for my truck listed above. They look and function great, but I’ve run into some issues wiring the LEDs. The instruction video says to splice the LED into the low beam wiring. If I do that then the LEDs will only light up when the headlights are on, not with the DRL, parking lamp setting, or high beams.
I called the manufacturer, and they said I could alternatively splice them into the DRLs. The downside here is that the LED will only be in with the DRL, not when the headlights switch on.
The best answer I’ve gotten is to wire the LEDs independently to a relay through the fuse box then to a switch I could manually hit from in the cab. This seems like way more money and effort than I was hoping to spend on a cosmetic upgrade. Is there possibly an alternative way of splicing into a continuous power source once the truck is on?
Sorry for the novel but hopefully you enjoy a puzzle. Thanks,
-05Colorado

1 Reply

STEVE W.

MECHANIC
12,963 POSTS

It depends on when you want them on. Sounds like the instructions have them coming on only with low beams in the attempt to make them somewhat legal as they would then act like fog lamps. Then the DRL option would make them act like the DRLs. However it sounds like you want them to come on when you turn on the lights and stay on. For that you would connect them to the marker lights. Then they would come on with both the markers lights and stay on with the headlights on low or high beam.
Up front that would be the brown wires at either side. However I would still wire them in using a relay and a different power source than the OE lights. That would be so that in the event one failed or shorted it wouldn't impact the factory lighting. For that you would use a single brown wire to trigger the relay which then powers the halos using a separate fused lead.

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