My bro has a 96 Audi A4. He just bought some aftermarket fogs (a good kind, not the advance auto special), and are supposed to be run off of the power for his daytime running lights that are in his headlights. What he did not know is that his vacuum pump was broken under the original owner, and some electrical components were damaged, namely his factory fog lights, power door locks, etc.
Well, when he installed these lights, and tapped into the power for the factory headlight-fogs, he obviously didn't get any light. All of the damaged wiring components were literally ripped from the car. Remembering what I did with my fogs by rewiring them, and sourcing power from my Parking lights wire in the fuse box, I figured I might be able to apply this same technique to his car. Right now though, I'm worried that I will be bypassing maybe a fuse somewhere, or something like that.
So my question is, are there any forseable problems for tapping into his parking lights for power to his headlights so that whenever he turns on those his fogs turn on (they wouldn't run on a seperate switch anymore). I will literally be just tapping into the parking light wire, and running an 18 ga. or so to his foglights. Will this cause any problems, will I be skipping a fuse anywhere? I'm mainly concerned with ruining his brand new 300 dollar foglight kit or causing a dangerous electrical situation. Thanks for the help, and I apologize for not making this more Maxima specific. I asked on an Audi forum, but instead of helping with problems, they prefer looking at pictures...haha.
Lou

 

you can possibly put in an inline fuse, but my experience with this is that it just keeps blowing anyways. mainly the fuse in the fusebox for the parking lights. have you tried to check the audi forums yet?

 

another thing you should look for and work off of is the relay that runs those lights. (parking)

 

So if I'm understanding you correctly, you are saying it's not probable that my solution will work well? I did go on audizine.com, but they just let the tread die, there were too many "Look at my wax job" threads, which is cool until you need help...

 

My biggest fear is that doing this will f something else up in his car, however if the fuse in the fuse box for the parking lights won't be bypassed, at least I have a little safety feature. Thanks for your help.

 

Post your question here http://www.audiworld.com/forum/. I used to be a member there when I had the A4. Great bunch of people, very knowledgeable.

 

Ok, thanks for the link. But before I do that, does anyone see a thread with wiring his foglights like that? From a hypothetic standpoint?

 

If you try to run the fogs off of the parking lights power you will blow the fuse. I just made this real quick and I think it is what you need. This will make the fogs come on whenever the parking lights are on. You will need to use a fuse off of the battery. The fog light kit probably came with the correct one. Also I would run some bigger wire then 18. I would say to use 14.

 

Thanks for the info, but out of curiosity, why does our 4G fog light rewire (not the independent fog rewire made my JSutter), but the one that turns on our fogs when the parking lights are turned on, and keeps the fogs on when the high beams are used, NOT blow our parking light fuse? Why is a Maxima able to utilize this simple wire splicing technique?

 

There is only one I am aware of that uses the parking lights. It is the one that taps into the parking light wire and is run into the relay box. It doesn't blow a fuse because it just signals the original fog light circuit to give power, it doesn't take it from the parking lights. I hope that makes sense.

 

My brother has a B5 A4 1.8T quattro. I tells me theres something you wire up under the glove box for the fog light mod. He could care less, so he hasn't actually done it yet but check the audi forums...like audizine.com. It's a known mod for them too.

 

Well, here's what we did: Instead of using a relay, we decided to wire up a completely independent fog switch to run the new fogs off of.
SO, we attached an inline fuse to 14 guage wire. One wire goes from the battery, through the inline switch, into the passenger compartment, and then into the switch.
Another wire goes to a ground in the dash and to another point on the switch.
Another wire goes from the "Load" tab on the switch, goes back to the engine bay, splits off into two, and goes to each foglight.
HOWEVER, it isn't working. There is literally two wires to hook up on the actually fog: a power and a ground. The power obviously goes to the wires going through the switch, and the ground is again obviously grounded.
The switch is getting power, as the green LED lights, but the lights won't go on. So, then I got tired of it, and put the positive wire going to a fog directly on the positive battery terminal, and got nothing. Is the bulb blown or something? What is going on?
Thanks for your help.