Just got my second Venza. Had an 09 V6 AWD "Limited" 5 years ago. First post on Toyota Nation.
After reading 1.2 billion threads and posts, I finally mustered the courage to get my fog lights to work anytime I wanted them to and still shut off when the car is turned off. The fog light switch still works, on and off. No extra relays, switches or junk. No one can tell you've moded. Perfectly clean.
This is a 2010 4cyl AWD model w/o Nav and DRLs, U.S. Model.
Two steps:
1) Remove the 2 Philips screws on each side of the steering wheel to lower the lower cover, exposing several wires and wire looms. Unplug the wire loom from below the turn signal/headlight/fog light stock. The plug is white. Remove the electrical tape and black conduit. There should be a red wire and white wire by themselves in a row in the white plug. Cut the red wire 1/2 way between the plug and the wire loom. Tape the end going into the car/wire loom. It is not needed. Strip back to expose wire on the end that is still connected to the white plug.
2) Behind the coin tray on the lower left side of the dash is the fog light relay. I'm not entirely sure it is a relay based on what I've read in the forum, but that is what I'm going with here. I removed the lower dash panel to make this easier. It was a 10mm bolt on the left and a Philips screw on the right. The rest is press in clips. The knee airbag panel/unit directly below the steering wheel stays and does not come off with the lower dash panel. Once the lower dash panel is out, you can easily see two blue relays. Wiggle loose the one on the left (see pic). There are 4 blades on the relay. The one on the upper left of the relay, I put a "tap a fuse" spade next to the upper left blade and then reinstalled it.
Run a wire from the "tap a fuse" spade you just installed at the relay to the red wire in the turn signal/headlight/fog light stock. Use connectors of your choice. You can see what I used. Test everything before you button it back up. Secure the wire you added appropriately. I ran it along a factory wire loom and used a few zip ties. That's it. Super simple. As you can see from the other butt connectors coming from the stock, I had a couple of trial and errors until I figured it out. All told, took me about 1.5 hours total and I'm not a gear head and have an irrational fear of electricity. This could all be done in about 20-30 minutes.
Results:
Auto when lights are not on: Fog lights work
Parking lights on: Fog lights work
Headlights on: Fog lights work
Headlights and brights are on: Fog lights work
Headlights set to "off": Fog lights go off
Shut the door: Fog lights go off after the 30 second delay (or whatever it is)
Anyone can do this. Enjoy.
