I have a 03 S type 80.000 miles Auto lights are coming on in daylight. They will shut off when you turn car off. Is this a relay or sensor?

 

Welcome to the forum Dan,

You should ask your question in the S type section.

The sensor is in the center of the dash are you sure that nothing is covering it?

 

nothing covering all clear

 

If the car has a MAPLE LEAF on the pillar where the Federal VIN plate is, then it is a Canadian Import and sometimes you CANNOT turn the DRL off. We had several of these cars come through the dealer for warranty work from a used car company. They would buy them at action and ship them to Texas. Some of the customers that bought them wanted the DRL disabled and I told them that some cars were wired that way and some are configured with software. The X308 cars CANNOT be configured with software to disable Canadian DRLs. I think I remember that the choices were Canadian DRL or Scandinavian DRL (what's the difference?). I am not sure about the X202 but a trip to the dealer or someone with PDU,WDS,IDS etc. can check the Vehicle Configuration and see if that option is available.

If the car is NOT a Canadian Import then....

The headlamp switch could be faulty????

The TWILIGHT SENTINEL system can be faulty????

bob gauff

 

Defintly not canadian just started happening. How can i tell if it is the swich or the twilight system.

 

welcome to our site Dan, good to have you here with us.

As mentioned - you need to check into the relevant section for the best results

In the meantime I've manually upgraded you to full forum access so you can better view the site

 

That's funny ... Canadians and others hoping to buy sun baked Texas cars ending up with cars used in Canadian winters.

Scandinavian = driving lights + side markers + tail lights

Much preferable to baking those expensive headlight reflectors unnecessarily. The silvering likes to peel at the the circumference of the bulb hole.

Canadian = Scandinavian + low beams

On a X308, it has been reported that a Canadian market vehicle that had the headlight switch replaced with a US version left the DRL inoperative.

It makes sense, because it seems the autoheadlight sensor sans threshold adjustment is used to drive the headlight switch circuit. It presents ground to the Canadian headlight switch, which only has 3 positions, at all times. The functionality of the switch is to enable instrument panel night lighting(the center console switches) and enable foglight(front and rear) usage.

If the auto headlight circuit is cut, a Canadian X308 headlight switch should, as a best guess, operate much as a standard headlight system without auto headlights. The adjustment rheostat for auto headlight sensor threshold is missing from the mirror on Canadian vehicles, so it is useless in that capacity anyways.

It is also possible to pass the Canadian inspection by taping over the auto headlight sensor and using the auto headlight position on a US switch, if the inspector is not too familiar with the car. If he does pick it up, then jumpering the auto headlight signal to the side marker and lowbeam wires to the BCM will accomplish full DRL functionality if the buyer has not had the presence of mind to ask a US dealer to pre-program DRL and the Canadian dealer is asking too much to program it.