It looks like today will be the last day I'm driving my car as it will be put away most likely tomorrow or Friday so I had 2 more days of driving and testing the modded light sensor in the car.
Yesterday was a little cloudy with not much sun when I went out with the car. After a bit of driving I stopped the car under a dark bridge. Expecting the lights to come on after a fair bit of delay that didn't happen within 2-3 secs the lights were on. Once I drove out from under the dark bridge lights went out fairly quickly. Again a good test was when I drove it back into my garage it was again about 10-15 secs before the lights would come on so that is much better than before where they would come on immediately after driving in.
Today was more sunny than yesterday so again after driving a while I parked it under the same dark bridge and the lights would come after a longer delay than yesterday but the delay wasn't substantial. Once again when I drove it into my garage I now had the time to shut off all my accessories before shutting the car off without the lights coming on so it's now like my C6 Z06.
So the takeaway from this is..............yes removing that white silicone stuff in the sensor does help in keeping the lights from coming on like before but if you are in a fairly dark area (like that bridge I was under) the difference from stock is almost nil, but in my garage or driving around Sherway under the roof parking area the lights will stay off for longer than the previous factory setup.
Over the winter I'll do some voltage checks and see if there is a way to add a different photo diode that will generate the steady voltage needed to make the car and BCM think it is daylight all the time AND not mess up the HVAC readings for that system.
I hope the sun does not bake that photocell now that it does not have the silicone to protect it/control the amount of light that goes into it.
You have a good point, only time will tell next year if not having that silicone will wreck my sensor on there currently. I will say that I usually don't park my car outside for long periods and if I do I place a sunshade inside. The real test is if I'm on a road trip with the sun shining down on the dash for hours whether that will heat up the sensor inside that dome holder enough to wreck it.