While DRLs are great where you need them (northern countries, rainy places) some people don't want them on all the time. The Gen1 Prius (2001-2003) with Factory DRL's is a bit a pain to defeat. You cannot just pull a fuse or relay and the main DRL relay is a complicated unit that is burried far far under the dash. The easiest way I've found to disable DRL is to cut a wire under the passenger side engine room fusebox. Under the fusebox is a junction point butt splice (E2 on the wiring diagram). It has 2 Red/Black and 2 Red/Green wires all tied together with black shrink tubing and a "ring bump" around the end. If you don't see the butt splice you may have to unravel some of the electrical tape to expose it. If you cut the Red/Black wire with silver dots the DRL feature will stop working, but headlights will work normally if you turn the headlight switch on. If you strip the ends of the cut wire and put male/female connectors you can re-enable them easily at a later time....perhaps disable for summer and enable for winter months. You could also extend the cut wires and install a more accessible toggle switch.
Has somebody found a way to disable it in gen 2? Looking at wiring diagram only possible way seems to be to bypass the body ecu and connect headlight switch directly to light relays.
Hey.. found this post yesterday from 4 years ago and was just what I needed. My 02 has 429k miles and I have been thru at least 4 sets of lights. I cut the red/black strips with dots and poof ... out. Now I will upgrade to the brightest bulb I can . Never would have figured it out since I have little patience. Hope it makes it to 500k Thanks from Lebanon Indiana Don Maw
I just got mine and my headlights would not turn on anymore so I had to solder the wire back together Why is it when I cut my wire my headlights would not turn on with the switch it was a red wire with a black line and silver dots just like you described but it did not work.
You either cut the wrong wire or something else going on with the car, check all fuses/relays/switches/wiring harnesses related to headlamps. You may need to study the wiring diagram and use a multimeter to trace and troubleshoot your car. If your car has factory DRL the wiring diagram is below. Cars without factory DRL are wired differently so you'll need a different wiring diagram.
A better question probably is: Has anyone found a cure for obsessive-compulsive worry about things that don't really mean s*** ????
