Hey guys,

Tonight I was just finishing up the minor touches on my 99 Z24 so I could take it to a garage next week to get it safetied. I had to wire up my own relay schematic for the DRLs using 2 SPDT relays to ground out the DRL relay when the ignition is on, but switching off the ground as soon as the headlight switch is turned on in any way. This worked fine and I got that all taped up and cleaned up and I was changing fog light bulb. This is when everything went awry and I started to get a little pissed off. While I was putting the light back into the housing to lock it into place the light grounded out somehow and now I have no DRLs, no instrument cluster backlights and the radio lights up, but as soon as I turn the headlights on, the radio screen shuts off too. Even after unplugging all the relays and everything I had done to it (which I can't see having any affect on that part of the car) it still does the same.
I've checked all the fuses but they're all fine. The headlights still work when I turn them on, high beams, low beams, parking lights, just no DRLs. I'm utterly confused as this is acting like a blown fuse. Is there one somewhere on the car that I'm unaware of that might cause this?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, my 3 month project was so close to being done and something like this happens. Needless to say I'm a little pissed off at myself right now. But ya, I need the DRL in Manitoba to get it safetied...

DRL should only come on when the e brake is fully disengaged. look for a one wire contact switch located right at the metal mounts for the hand brake. no custom relay setup should be needed for this. the car already has a relay to take care of that. check on the contact switch to make sure you dont have a short or its constantly grounded somehow. if you really want to bypass the DRLs just break that one wire with an on off switch or just cut the wire in half AFTER your saftey inspection.

I took my dash apart and found out I forgot to plug a harness in when I checked the cluster. Now all that works.

Now I found another problem. I took it for a drive and it appears to be running fine. The Check Gauges light is on and the ETS Off and ABS lights are on as well. But I was driving it testing it out, and I gave it some gas to see if it would complain when that happened. When I did this the transmission kicked down a gear or two and the tach popped up to about 5k RPM. This is when the engine cut out and then kicked back in below 4k. After that I eased my way up and found out it won't exceed 4K RPM while driving, almost like it doesn't know it's in gear or something. Is there any known problem that might cause this?

As for the DRLs, all I know is that the DRL relay isn't being grounded in the fuse box at any time while the car is running and/or in gear. I've heard it was the instrument cluster that could cause this. My wiring diagrams indicate that the ground for that relay comes from the cluster, so I just fixed that myself for the time being. Would a bad cluster cause this other problem I'm having though??

hhhmmmm. guess i'm outta advice for that. mines a 5 speed so i'm guessing your auto is wired different.

Ya, I'm not sure what the problem is. I know there's a rev limiter in park and neutral that won't let it rev over 40000 RPM, it's almost like the computer doesn't know it's in gear, but the tranny feels to shift fine, it just gives er @!#$ until you hit 4k and then it's slow going to get up to highway speed limit lol.