Cigarette lighter/cell phone charger socket shorting out

[cmac2012]

Custom Accessories Cigarette Lighter, from O'Reilly's.Two of them have been bad for me. I bought what I'm pretty sure is the same unit about four years ago and haven't had a minute of trouble with it.

No longer a happy customer. I kept shorting out and burning the inline fuse. I had it hooked to the glove box light wiring, I disabled the switch that turns it off when you close the door, and had the wire hanging out the glove box door. But it only worked when the key was on. About every two weeks it would burn the fuse. I thought it was something to do with my funky wiring.

I decided to go big time, I found a 12 V hub in front of the passenger side under the hood. That's what I did with the first of these sockets, I wired it directly to the battery so I could charge my phone without the keys in the car. I thought it must be my problem, but then as I narrowed it down I saw no, it's the socket. At one point I put the continuity probes to positive and negative and it was zero ohms. Oh boy. Twice I had a good set up wired up, didn't understand the problem.

[P.C.]

I really would reconsider the idea of not having the circuit controlled by the ignition switch. At least if you have an issue with the accessory while you are in the car, you have a shot of dealing with it before it turns your car into a charcoal briquette...as you are seeing, a lot of aftermarket electrical accessories aren't exactly OEM quality.

[cmac2012]

Part of my goal was to stay away from the ignition switch. I did that on my van five years ago. I haven't had a day of trouble with it. I found the hot leads under the hood, I attached some 14 ga multi strand wire with an in-line fuse, ran it through the firewall and hooked it up to a cigarette lighter. I can charge my phone anytime, keys, or no keys. I'm not worried about depleting the battery.

I want something like the USB jacks that are on state of the art car stereos. I want to bypass the cigarette lighter bullshirt altogether.

I found this on Amazon, might be the ticket:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D5HL4K9L/ref=sspa_mw_detail_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9waG9uZV9kZXRhaWwp13NParams

No, wait, looks like it's only for android phones. But I thought the PD socket was an iPhone type.

[P.C.]

The inline fuse does help, particularly if it is installed close to the battery. I remember an event that I had many years ago, when I had a cellphone installed in my car (Remember those?). The installer ran the power wire under my dashboard in the area of the foot operated parking brake, forgetting that I might actually want to apply the brake sometime in the future. I drove the car home from the installation, and parked it on a hill. I stepped on the parking brake, heard a loud FZZZZT, and my car filled with black smoke. I wisely decided to exit the vehicle and let the smoke clear. The section of the power line between it's origin and it's inline fuse had burned completely away. Fortunately, the car did not have any significant damage...

[cmac2012]

My first vehicle was a '59 International travel all panel. One day I monkeyed with something on the dash, suddenly a huge amount of smoke was coming out of the ashtray, which was mounted in the dash. Not sure what wire I shorted, it continued to run just fine, but I got an introduction to that sort of thing.

[tbomachines]

What model? On my w212 and a buddy's GLK, the front cig lighter slot does not power a standard charger. No idea why but it may be a weird Merc thing? Fuses seemed fine. My chargers have worked well in the other 12V slots without issue, so I keep it plugged into the console outlet.

[cmac2012]

It's an '84 W123; 300D.

The stock cigarette lighter was part of the ashtray. It had (absolutely past tense) some sort of contact underneath that remained intact when the ashtray was operated, opened, etc. It was one of those things that you realized you were never gonna fix as soon as you saw it. Metal fatigue is a MFer.

I bought this car on the road in Oregon when my SDL blew its radiator. As luck would have it the Indy yard in Eugene where I was towed had this low miles cherry looking 123 on the lot. I quickly realized the cigarette lighter was not going to work. I got some advice here about using the glove box light wires. This after I couldn't find a terminal under the dash. My SDL has a really nice semi protected terminal where you can get 12 V pretty easily.

The cigarette lighter idea worked until recently. I kept blowing the number five fuse. Also operates the radio. I thought maybe the radio was getting funky and shorting. I think it was the lighter fixture all along. When I finally hit on that as a possibility, I bought a new one, it was the same brand. But the one in the van was also the same O'Reillys cheapo and it has worked perfectly. What are the odds that I would buy another one that was bad? When I was trying to chase it down at one point I put in a new fuse with nothing in the socket. It immediately burnt. So I unhooked the charger from all wires and did a continuity test between the positive and ground leads. Resistance quickly went down to zero. The damn things were connecting somehow inside. I was so close to getting this right. I really need a mobile charger.