Lotus Elan Central

The lights installed are Hella 90mm LED Daytime Running Lights: http://www.myhellalights.com/index.php/ ... m-led-drl/
Each light consists of 3 super bright LEDs with a durable plastic lens and adonized aluminum body.
Aluminum and steel angle iron and aluminum square stock was purchased in addition to a few stainless steel nuts and bolts.
The angle iron was cut and the nuts and bolts were welded to the steel.
The aluminum square stock was welded to the aluminum angle iron to bring the lights out away from the radiator.
The wiring harness has 3 connections, 1 for each light and 1 for power/ground/parking lights.
The power was taken from the fusebox in the passenger footwell (fuse 25 is an unused ignition controlled fuse).
With the ignition on the DRLs are on, but when the parking lights or headlights turn on the DRLs turn off.


Front bumper removed and upside down.
Installed new aluminum angle iron with new modified steel angle iron.
The aluminum angle iron has a notch cut into it because of the AC pipe on the radiator.
The original steel angle iron was replaced due to the change of dimensions when adding the aluminum.


Front end of car with bumper removed.
Showing AC radiator with interfering pipe.
Showing wiring harness for additional lights (left side shown, right side out of field of view).
Black line on the right side frame interface showing top end of new aluminum angle iron.


Ignition on, daytime running lights on, turn signal on.


Ignition on, parking lights on.
Daytime running lights automatically turn off.


Close up of both lights.
The reduced area for airflow is not concerning for the following reasons:
1. The lights use approximately the same area as a front license plate, we have no front license plate.
2. The coolant radiator has been replaced with a new Ron Davis all aluminum alloy radiator (having 1-2 more fins per inch than the OEM radiator) due to a small leak in the original radiator.
3. Running at normal highway speeds and city driving with infrequent stops the coolant temperature stays just below the 1/4 mark (approx 80 C according to ElanScan).
4. The center radiators have 2 cooling fans to force airflow if the temps get too high, the side radiators do not.


Driver's side close up.
Notice the lights are directional. There is a top/bottom and the 2 LEDs must go on the outside with the single LED on the inside.


Passenger's side close up.
Notice the lights are directional. There is a top/bottom and the 2 LEDs must go on the outside with the single LED on the inside.

A nice job. Out of curiosity, how easy was it to remove the front bumper?

I would like to convert park lights to DRL. Any more details on how you did it using fuse 25? Right now I have to turn on my park lights each time it turn onmy car. I did a LED conversion to the park turn lights but would much more prefer they came on automatically. This was my project. viewtopic.php?f=80&t=20246#p258444 but really want them to come on each time I start my car. Thanks.

James

There's plenty of ways to do it. I did mine by using the parking lights (which are legal for use as DRL's) instead of adding additional lights as I plan on adding front fog lights in the future. I spliced into the power for the wiper motor and ran a wire through the engine bay to the wheel well where the wiring for the parking lights terminated. Since I use LED bulbs now the current draw for two lights is insignificant requiring no increase in fuse size. I cut the wires to the parking lights and used waterproof connectors to connect the new wiring system and seal off the old wire. Parking lights now turn on with ignition - simple and I didn't need to use up the extra fuse spot.

Elanlover wrote:A nice job. Out of curiosity, how easy was it to remove the front bumper?

Removal of the front bumper sounds more daunting than it actually is.
With two people it takes a couple of hours.
Based off memory you need to disconnect the 2 wiring harnesses (one on each side) for the parking/flashing lights.
You also need to unbolt the radiator bracket protective panel in the center on the bottom.

There are 4 bolts holding the bumper to the front of the car in the front, and 1 bolt on each side.

2 of the front bolts can be accessed from the top through the pod bays.
2 of the front bolts can be accessed from the bottom through the wiring harness bays.
And the side bolts can be accessed through the wheel well.

I had an uneven number of spacer washers on the front bolts, I think this is due to the uneven nature of the fiberglass.

Very clever job And looks awesome