Suzuki Alto 2009+ Adding Fog Lights and Daytime Running Lights

Fog Lights & Daytime Running Lights:

I've upgraded the vehicle by adding LED fog lights and Daytime Running Lights (DRLs) to the vehicle.  

I wanted to fit some sort of DRLs to the vehicle as it makes the vehicle more visible to other road users and pedestrians.  Prior to fitting the vehicle with DRLs, I used to drive around during the day with the headlights on, especially on overcast days.

You can purchase aftermarket fog light replacements from AliExpress which have DRLs built in.  As my variant of the vehicle is the cheap manual model, it didn't come with fog lights, which also means no fog light wiring loom.  As such, I made the fog light loom, which wasn't difficult - just follow the wiring diagram in the service manual.  In addition to that, I ran a pair of extra power wires, one for each DRL light.

To make wiring up the fog light part easier, you can do as I did and purchase a spare engine bay fuse box from a wrecking yard, in order to get the wires and connectors out of it for the fog light fuse and relay, which allows you to wire them in the same way it's done from the factory.

These are the fog lights I purchased: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001456796944.html 

The DRLs are nice and bright, and the fog lights are aimed in a wide but narrow beam, which is what you want.  In fact, compared with the factory fog lights, the spread of the fog light beam is almost identical.  They are quite nice to drive with and complement the headlights quite well.  Due to the fog lights being LED and bright white in colour, I also changed the headlight globes to Philips H4 WhiteVision Ultra globes (4200K), which are apparently the whitest road-legal headlamps you can use in Australia.  These make the DRLs and fog lights look like they're supposed to be there, despite the headlight globes still being halogen.

These fog lights aren't ADR approved, so they're not road legal.  This is part of the reason why I used the factory connectors for the fog lights, so that they could be (fairly) easily removed and replaced with the factory fog lights for roadworthy purposes.

I've been driving around with the fog lights on at night and I'm not getting flashed by oncoming vehicles, so I don't think they're dazzling/blinding other drivers.

The pair of fog/DRL lights cost round $80 AUD at the time.  The lenses are unfortunately plastic, so time will tell how long they last.  If it's a problem, I'll probably try to remove them and replace them with glass lenses from the factory fog lights.

One note for anyone that purchases these, is that the LED driver board is inside a small metal enclosure, but the enclosure isn't waterproof.  They've gone to some trouble to fill the enclosure with potting compound, presumably to protect the PCB from moisture, but the PCBs in mine weren't completely covered.  As such, I used neutral cure silicone to cover the remaining parts of the LED driver boards, and I also sealed up the enclosure they're in with neutral cure silicone as well.  This will void the warranty, but what's a warranty from China worth?  In my experience, not much.

Note that you should only use neutral cure silicone when applying silicone to electronics.  This is because the acetoxy silicones release acetic acid when they cure, which is corrosive.

As my vehicle didn't come with fog lights from the factory, there were no wires for fog lights, and the vehicles never came with DRL's, so there's no wire for those either.  I made the loom using two fog light connectors that I got from another Alto at a self serve wrecking yard.  I purchased some automotive wire of the same colours (green and black) as used in the factory wiring loom, and decided that white would be a good colour for the DRL power wires.  I purchased a couple of new AMP Superseal 1.5 1-way connectors for the DRL power connectors, as these are waterproof automotive connectors.

These fog/DRL lights don't come with connectors attached, just bare wires that you need to fit connectors to.  As I wanted to run a factory-compatible loom for the fog lights, I purchased two second-hand H11 lamps (as used in the factory fog lights) and cut the connector off them.  There were other options, but this was the quickest method, short of waiting for connectors to arrive from China.

On the back of the H11 globes, you'll see a green plastic cover which you can remove, behind which you'll find where the two pins of the connector come out and go into the lamp.  I snapped the globe off, removed the metal clip around the base of the globe and basically just kept whittling down the globe assembly until I was basically just left with the connector.  I then soldered the wires onto the back of the connector (making sure to get the polarity right), filled it with silicone to waterproof it and clipped the green plastic cover back on.

Daytime Running Lights (DRLs):

DRLs can be added to the vehicle fairly easily.  DRLs should be on when the engine is running, and on some vehicles, the engine oil pressure switch is used for this purpose.  Unfortunately, the engine oil pressure which isn't just a simple on/off signal - it's a pulsed signal from the BCM, so using this wasn't going to be as easy as I'd hoped.

Thinking about this further, I decided that using the fuel pump relay to run the DRLs, via a second relay, would be the best way to do it.  The engine computer will stop the fuel pump when the engine isn't running, so this works out well.

In the engine bay fuse box, there's a relay for the fuel pump.  The relay has a pink wire going to it, which feeds power to the fuel pump.  I removed the pink wire from the fuse box housing, which has a female 6.3mm QC connector on the end, then using a scrap fuse box, I took out the pink fuel pump wire and attached a male 6.3mm QC terminal to one end, and also crimped in another wire for the DRL relay coil power at the same time.  Doing it this way, there are no permanent modifications to the vehicle wiring loom.

In the fuse box, you will find a couple of negative wire splices where there's a bunch of black wires all spot welded together.  You can solder an extra negative wire for the DRL relay to the spot welded splices.

The reason for using a dedicated relay for powering the DRLs was for safety reasons.  I theorised that during a frontal collision, it would be possible for the fog light and DRL power wires to short together, resulting in the fog light power back-feeding the fuel pump circuit and keeping the pump running.  This would obviously be a safety hazard.

Using the fuse box from the wreckers, I was also able to wire up a fuse for the DRLs, which is also present in the engine bay fuse box.  I chose a spare fuse position and inserted the missing terminal which I got out of the scrap fuse box.  To save future confusion, I labelled the DRL wires inside the fuse box.

Engine bay fuse box with Fog & DRL fuses and relays installed.

The DRLs use around 500mA (0.5A) each, so I chose to use a 2A fuse (2x0.5A = 1A).

The LED fog lights use around 1A each, so 2x1A = 2A,  I could have used a 3A fuse, but they were't available, so I chose a 5A fuse instead.

2A Fuses: Littelfuse Inc, P/N: 0891002.NXS (Digi-key P/N: F5926-ND)
5A Fuses: Littelfuse Inc, P/N: 0891005.NXS (Digi-key P/N: F5927-ND)