i was under the impression the HID only come on when the toggle thingy is set to 'on'... so if you flash, even with the HIDs off, they shouldnt be affected either way... although, not owning an 8 yet, i cant verify this

 

I think you are mistaken. On every car that I have seen that comes with HID low beams they ALWAYS stay on with the highbeams. Audi S4, BMW E46 and E39, S2000, etc. You are correct, the reasons are it is bad for the HID bulbs to be turned on/off/on and there is the lag while they "come up" so on these cars flipping the high beams on means four lights. Then when you go back to the lows there is no delay while they fire up or extra stress on the bulbs.

This did this before you did ANY mod to your car.

I think you should find that with the headlights off or just parking lights on, that hitting the "flash to pass" should NOT put on the HID low beams at all, just the high beams.

I will double check on my car, but I would be very surprised if the HIDs would come on - before or after the mod.

Dennis

 

I was wrong. I checked this on mine and flash to pass turns on the highs AND fires up the HID low beams.

Can someone who has NOT done the mod check and see if their car does this? It should, since looking at the mod logic I don't see how I could have "messed this up".

Dennis

 

thats really strange. i figured that the high beams would be able to operate seperately of the low bemas, since they are seperate (and completely different style) bulbs...

i dont see how the mod could really affect this, since you arent touching the high beams or low beams controlspower/wiring at all

 

when I would flash my high-beams the HIDs would come on when my car was stock and still do it now that I have the fog-light mod done.

reading the above it shows that others confirm this is happening, any ideas on a rewire/patch job.

frequently when were going in a caravan to an autox or a car meet, we turn out harzards on for a few blinks if we want the car behind us to pass, and flash out high beams if we want to pass the car in front of us. this really helps when 1 person knows where we are going better than another.

i just want my high beams to work when I want by using the stalk to flash them or 'lock' them in the on position.

on a side note, i looked into some of my friends cars on all the cars in our little group, the cars with dual filiment head lights (both high and low beam in 1 bulb) work in a way that when the high beam is on, the low beam is off (02 and 03 civic). other cars that have seperate head lights for high and low beams seem to 'add' the highbeam to the lowbeam when you turn on your brights (03 and 05 rsxs).

all of the other cars I talked about above are stock as far as the lighting systems go.

maby this bright thing is a 'rule' similar to the fogs coming on only with head lamps?

 

Both of my BMWs had HID low beams and I know that neither of them turned on the low beams with "flash to pass" if the lights were off. They DID keep the lows on with the highs when you had the lights on as I mentioned earlier.

Next time I am in the S2000 (if the rain ever stops) I will check it, but I am betting that flash to pass only does the high beams if the lights are off.

I think Mazda just copulated the canine with this one. Maybe there are just not used to HID lights and made a mistake in the wiring design?

Dennis

 

What a great mod so quick so easy, so worth it. Thank you to everyone that made this possible.

 

Better late than never! Did this last weekend, and replaced the stock H11 fog bulbs with yellow ones. Now I have Honest-to-God fog lights! :D

Woot!

 

^^ Same here.. better late than never. Just finished this and it was incredibly easy. Hardest part was getting of my a$$ to do it. Thanks to the founders for documenting this.

 

Worked like a charm! Great mod, super easy to do. Thanks Mags

 

Did the mod in about 10 minutes! The free mods are the best ones!!

Took pictures and posted them here:

http://koczarski.com/RX8/Mods/FogLight/ReWire.htm

 

Excellent post and pictures AdamK.

Job well done.

 

Wow !!!

Great DIY post - thanks AdamK.

Finally DRLs for this ex-Canadian.

 

Nice job on the pix - make it very clear.

The best part is in the first 2 pix you can see the color printouts he was using to do the job

Dennis

 

Kind of late in the game, just though I'd note that if you remove the main power cables on the windshield-side of the fuse block, you can get a whole heap of room to work. Of course, remove the battery cables first. And I taped the leads of the mains cables while I had them disconnected just to be double sure.

 

Can you post a pic of this with the yellow lights? This sounds like something I want to do.

Thanks.

 

just did mine last night, took 20 minutes. i ran my fog relay to the acc relay like Omicron did. i also put on a yellow film on my fogs from lamin-x and replaced my bulbs with nokya hyper yellows. looks freakin HOT. i love it! thanks Magnesium and Omicron for the awesome instructions and pictures. it's people like you that make this forum so helpful.

 

Here's a pic. Car is filthy but you're interested in the lights . The yellow is a bit deeper than it appears in the photo. The bulbs were "JDM Yellow" from Luminics. I really wanted ion yellow bulbs for more output at same wattage but couldn't find any for this application. And I didn't want to exceed the 55W draw of the original.

 

Thanks for posting the pic and for the PM to let me know you posted it.

That does look really good. I am going to have to consider this a little closer. I just have to find the free time.

Thanks again Nubo.

 

Here is mine...
Yellow Fogs


Thanks for the DIY on this... awsome!!!!

 

Amazing how this continues to be such a popular little DIY. I've probably done it a dozen times now for local RX-8 owners and gotten to where it takes me like 5 minutes.

 

Yeah, you should give this one the Club-Best DIY Award.

 

I have a question for you guys who figured this re-wire out: Would it be a similar job to re-wire the front corner lights to act as side repeaters? On RX-8's outside the US, the front corner lights do not come on with the parking lights or headlights, but flash with the turn signals. That is the only time you see the amber light.

I assume that you could cut the wire from the front marker relay and tie it into turn signal relay?

I don't know if others would be interested in this mod, but since the JDM spec clear corners are so popular you'd think people would be interested in having those lights actually function as they would on a JDM spec car.

Technically, this wouldn't be legal, but I doubt a cop would notice, especially if it flashed amber. The clear corner lenses don't meet US regs and are illegal in most states because they don't reflect amber, but I've never heard of anyone getting a ticket. This also gets rid of the need to pull that reflector out of the clear corner because it's meant to reflect the turn signal back along the side of the vehicle, not out towards the front.

 

Can't find it but this has been raised before. I seem to remember that it was not a simple thing to do...but don't remember the details

 

What a pain it was for me. I thought I killed my baby.