My Cigarette Lighter Power Outlet Stopped Working in My Car

Hi, I’m Mike from 1A Auto. We’ve been selling auto parts for over 30 years!

It's pretty common today that people have phone chargers plugged into these 12-volt outlets that are here. Basically, this is what used to be your cigarette lighter, so some people still call them cigarette lighters, even though they don't have the element anymore. It's just a 12-volt socket now, and you can plug your phone charger in there or a GPS or whatever else you're using. Some people charge their computers, because they're on the road working. You can blow the fuse in those pretty easily, especially if you put in something that draws too much power or sometimes the way these are mounted in the car, spare change can fall in them and short it out, and you'll blow the fuse.

There's a fuse for this one, and in this particular car, there's another one. Also, in this car there's a power socket that is in here, and so that can be used to charge something that's in your center console. If they stop working and the outlets aren't providing power to your devices, you're going to want to check the fuses, so go down here and pull open the fuse panel. Just pull it down. It's got the fuse. All the fuses are marked on the panel that's up in here.

This arrow is pointing up. It's just like you're looking at the fuse panel and right here, so one of these is marked "cigarette or cigar lighter", and then the other one is marked "front power socket", so that'd be the one in the console in this car. You can see one is a 15 amp, and one is a 20 amp, so if you've got like a high-powered device that's drawing a lot of power, like say a computer charger or something, that keeps blowing this front one, the 15 amps, you should maybe try this other one that's got 20 amps. It's got more. It will take more power to blow that fuse. If you need to change it, you can go up, and you'd find, we're looking at this, so the 20 amp is the bottom one, that's our spare, then these are all color coded, and each color represents an amperage, so 20 is this yellow, 15s are this blue, and then so now we're up four, this next 20 is the front power socket, so you can either use take needle-nose pliers and pull this out, or at the very top of this fuse panel, there's often a tool to help you remove the fuses.

If you need to change it, you can just push this over, and then pull the fuse out, and then it's going to come right out like that. To tell if the fuse is blown, so right in here, to tell if a fuse is blown, there's a little loop of metal. These fuses are translucent. If the fuse was blown, you'd see that that metal loop was broken. Sometimes there might be some burning or melting to this plastic, and that's what when it reaches the amperage capacity of this. So 20 amps, it goes beyond that, it melts that metal and blows the fuse and breaks the circuit, so you don't damage the wiring in the car. This one's in good shape. It's perfectly fine.

I'm going to put it back in. It's just the reverse of taking it out. I'm just going to push it in and changing any other fuse would be the same way. You can replace the door when you're done, and you're all set. Oh, and don't forget to put your little tool back in. I left that in my hand, so I'm going to put that back in place. There it is. That clicks into place and then put the door back.

Thanks for watching. Visit us at 1AAuto.com for quality auto parts, fast and free shipping, and the best customer service in the industry.