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Help! Car cigarette lighter/power problem

Robert Maxwell

Robert Maxwell

memelord
Premium Member
Now it's my turn to have a thread with a random car question.

Since I bought my current car (1992 Corsica) the cigarette lighter/power receptacle hasn't worked. The assembly had fallen down into the console. So, I fished it out, replaced the fuse for it (which was blown), and confirmed that the actual cigarette lighter works. However, when I plug devices into it--such as a duplicator and a USB charger--their LEDs don't come on and they don't seem to be receiving power.

I thought maybe the problem was that the inside of the receptacle was rusted, so I bought a new one. But no, same problem--cigarette lighter works splendidly, but I can't seem to plug anything else into it. I even went so far as to disassemble the plastic housing and getting down to the two wires (red and black) to try to attach them manually to the lighter assembly. I only ended up with two kinds of results: blown fuse (short circuit?) or same as before (lighter works, fuse is okay, but nothing else will power.)

Anyone have any idea why the cigarette lighter itself would work but I can't even get a trickle of power out of it for anything else? I don't intend to hook up anything powerful--just a USB charger for an MP3 player, and an FM transmitter. We're talking very low wattage here.
 
Just throwing some things out there:

It's possible these devices you're trying to plug into the lighter aren't "right" for the ligher and you may need an adaptor. I've seen this on some cars where the plug on the modern device is "just" different enough from the lighter-recepticle to make it not work. You may need an adaptor or an entirely new, modern, lighter.

There's something wrong in the wiring. There could be something wrong between the lighter, the fuse box, and the rest of the car's electrical system that needs replaced to make sure the lighter is getting enough power to power these other devices.

There's something else wrong on the circuit. That breaker/fuse blew for a reason. Something is shorting out the system, something that's not severe enough to trip it when the ligher is used, or to fully trip it/blow it when the device is plugged in but something is wrong with it enough to the point where the plugged-in device cannot get the power it needs. Something in the electrical system of that circuit, or possibly some wires near that circuit, to make it not work fully.

I say this mostly as just a guessing layman from the few things I know about cars and electrical systems. Take it all for what it is worth.
 
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I have a guess.

The cigarette lighter, and only the cigarette lighter, works because it doesn't care about polarity. Check to see if plus and minus are reversed.
 
Thanks, Trekker. I'm suspecting a wiring problem somewhere, too. Given that I easily managed to short it out and blow the fuse, you may be right. Naturally, the wiring for this thing goes elsewhere in the car and may be difficult to track down. Perhaps it would make more sense for me to yank out my stereo instead and just install one with an audio in/USB port. :lol: At least the stereo works.

gturner, there is no polarity to worry about here--the wires are just live and ground, that's it.
 
In one of my vehicles, there's the lighter, and then lower down on the center console is an actual power receptacle that looks very similar. The lighter port won't power anything, and you got me as to why not, but it certainly seems that it was designed that way.
 
You may need to reverse the polarity and reverse the secondary electron flow. Use some borg nano-probes to do this the easiers. If that doesn't work try wiring the cigarette-lighter through the car's main deflector dish.
 
B.J. said:
In one of my vehicles, there's the lighter, and then lower down on the center console is an actual power receptacle that looks very similar. The lighter port won't power anything, and you got me as to why not, but it certainly seems that it was designed that way.
Click to expand...

That's possible but it seems that that secondary power-port became more popular over the last few years as cell-phones, MP3 players and iPods and the like became more common and popular.

It's doubtful a car made in the early 90s would've had a secondary power-port to power people's CD-players and bag-phones. ;)
 
Yeah, it does not have a secondary power port, just the cigarette lighter. I guess it's possible it wasn't designed for other stuff to work in it. :(
 
I really doubt that, but if you want to you can pick up a universal cigarette lighter socket at Radio Shack for just a couple of bucks. That has to work unless, as I suggested earlier, the previous owner of the car who left the cigarette lighter dangling loose had somehow swapped the ground and live wires somewhere, in which case all your devices are seeing what they think is -12 VDC instead of +12 VDC.

Anyway, another quick check you could try is hooking your cigarette lighter socket directly to your battery posts with some jumper cables, then trying out various devices in it to see which ones work.
 
I've decided to eliminate the wiring going from the fuse box to the cigarette lighter as a potential culprit. I've discovered something called an "add-a-circuit," which you plug into your fuse box and allows you to hard-wire accessories right into the box. It's looking like a fairly simple mod, too:

1. Install add-a-circuit into the fuse box.
2. Ground it to the door frame (there should be a bolt handy.)
3. Run wire from the pigtail on the add-a-circuit over to the console (just to keep it out of the way.)
4. Hook up wires to power port duplicator, which I have already disassembled and identified live and ground wires.
5. See if anything works!

Worst case, I blow the fuse in the add-a-circuit and call the whole thing a wash. But at least this will bypass the wiring in the car, so I'll know for sure the issue is elsewhere. My car has no other electrical problems, and has both a new alternator and battery, so I doubt it's anything more than a local wiring issue. We'll see.
 
So you're going to reroute auxillary power. :shifty:

You should've done that in the first place. You are on a Trek board, ya know. ;)
 
Robert Maxwell said:
I've decided to eliminate the wiring going from the fuse box to the cigarette lighter as a potential culprit. I've discovered something called an "add-a-circuit," which you plug into your fuse box and allows you to hard-wire accessories right into the box. It's looking like a fairly simple mod, too:

1. Install add-a-circuit into the fuse box.
2. Ground it to the door frame (there should be a bolt handy.)
3. Run wire from the pigtail on the add-a-circuit over to the console (just to keep it out of the way.)
4. Hook up wires to power port duplicator, which I have already disassembled and identified live and ground wires.
5. See if anything works!

Worst case, I blow the fuse in the add-a-circuit and call the whole thing a wash. But at least this will bypass the wiring in the car, so I'll know for sure the issue is elsewhere. My car has no other electrical problems, and has both a new alternator and battery, so I doubt it's anything more than a local wiring issue. We'll see.
Click to expand...

gturner said:
So you're going to reroute auxillary power. :shifty:

You should've done that in the first place. You are on a Trek board, ya know. ;)
Click to expand...

:guffaw:
 
Thread necromancy!!

I would have posted an update before I went to Indiana for a week, but I kinda got this done at the last minute.

It turned out the problem was the ground wire on the cigarette lighter assembly. I bought a circuit tester and confirmed this was the issue. So, I grounded a new wire to a piece of the metal frame down in the console, then hooked the ground and the live wire up to my port duplicator. I took apart the duplicator and hard-wired it so I'll always have the two ports. The mod worked well enough for my drive to and from Indiana, but there are a few issues to resolve:

1. Exposed wires are ugly. The duplicator just sits there on the console, with wires going inside the hole from the original lighter port. I guess I should get a Dremel and some mounting materials so I can actually mount the duplicator inside the console.
2. The circuit is always hot, so I have to pull the fuse whenever I'm going to leave the car to sit for a while. I imagine the drain on an FM transmitter is quite minuscule, but I don't want to take any chances. I intend to rewire the fuse at the box so that it's only activated by ignition/ACC, although I'm not sure what all is involved in that. If anyone has any advice on this, I'd appreciate it. :)

I'm just glad I didn't end up having to reroute the power, I suspect that would've been very annoying.
 
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