A few days ago my cig lighter stopped working. checked the wire that plugs in the back and got no power. needed a new lighter(no ceramic hardly left in old one) so I installed a new one. Prety sure i did it wrong. I grounded the outside of the lighter to a good ground and ran the pwr to the acc on my fuse box. damn wire insulation burned up after testing the lighter. nothing else burned and no fuses blew, thank god. nothing happened when i simply plugged in the phone charger but as soon as the lighter is pushed in, damn thing gets hot immediately and sends wayyyyy too much juice through the wire. it is 18g....same as the factory blue w/red plug. Any ideas! all fuses are good. radio use to have yellow going to the lighter but i moved it to green so i dont destroy it somehow, stereo is aftermarket.
What kind of new one? Like a $3 HELP products new one? So you connected it to the side of a current fuse? Are you sure it was the fused side and not the feed side? Sounds like a bad lighter or shorted housing. The center connector (positive) in the bottom of the lighter housing is supposed to be insulated from the housing (negative). Test it with another lighter, but install a fuse this time.
I got to believe u had it hooked to the feed side, not fused side. According to my diagram the cigar orig wire is "blue w/white tracer and goes to the #1 fuse. If I remember it is a little more than 18ga.; heating elements pull a lot of current. Like mentioned nx time put a fuse in the circuit b4 any testing. I wud use some kind of voltage probe and make sure I had the fused b4 makin a perm connection.
Hacking the harness is not helping your situation. The cig lighter needs a larger gauge wire, more like a #10. That's why the insulation burned off. The factory cig lighter wire was light blue/white. The blue/red is illumination and should only be hot when the lights are on.
That wire would handle 30 amps, almost the whole stock alternator output! A heating element only draws a large current when it's cold. As it warms up the resistance increases reducing the current draw. A properly working lighter will heat up quickly and not draw much current after the first few seconds.
I also had a problem with my cigarette lighters. Than i change my cigarette lighter instantly and its working well now. Sometimes we fetch some problem it there is always a solution there.
