God I hope not. Gonna go have a talk with my manual transmission... it best not be whoring around with no computers!
I bought the factory fog light setup for a 2010 Ram 2500 that I previously owned. I installed the kit from Mopar, and was excited to see my new fog lights blaze away, only to find out that I needed to get the computer flashed, and the fog light option code added to the "build" of the truck on the server back in the Cheyenne Mountain Complex at NORAD that Chrysler must have or else my new fog lights wouldn't work on my truck. Fog lights. Fog.....lights. Two lights, a new headlight switch, and two wiring pigtails that plugged right into the truck wiring. A very typical set up that I had installed on all of those "vintage" Power Wagons and Ramchargers in my younger days. Fog lights.....the same thing you used to be able to buy at Pep Boys for like $20, install, hook up 12 volts to a toggle switch, the lights, and a ground wire...and viola'.....light...from the fog lights. No computer. No programming. No "mother may I" request for permission back to the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz. Fog....lights. Not a flux capacitor. Not the phased plasma rifle in the 40 watt range.
So.....I was forced to go to the dealer....pay them $100 to flash the computer and log the install with SkyNet.....so that I could press the little button on the new headlight switch and get the fog lights to work. It never made sense to me...then...or now. In fact....everytime I think about it, I have to laugh or the insanity of it would make me very mad. I thought that aircraft engineers had goofy ideas......but if I ever met the engineer that thought requiring fog lights to go through a computer to be allowed to turn on was a wonderful fete of engineering......I'd need a lawyer...or two.
