Well. I decided to be the Guinea Pig. I successfully eliminated my DRLs without using range mode and here’s how I did it:
First, I disconnected the DRL wire to the headlight. This caused the blinkers to hyper flash and the headlights now wouldn’t turn off and brights disabled. No good.
After some playing around, I lowered the bumper cover on each side to access the side port in the headlights. I don’t know what size the bolts are but they aren’t torqued and easily removable with a pair of vice grips.
Once the side port is open, I disconnected the top plug to the DRL. Now everything functions fine. Blinkers don’t hyper flash, brights work, no error messages, everything works as it should. The DRLs are now permanently off.
Some headlights have 2 sets of wire connectors and some have 3. You can play around with disconnecting each set until the DRL is disconnected and the blinker works as it should.
I’m tired of buying a new headlight every year. It’s stupid. Would I like to have my DRLs? Sure. However, disabling the lights all together looks so much better than uneven ugly DRLs. At some point I may mess around with the spare headlights to see if I can add aftermarket LEDs but for now, I think this is the best solution.