Lighter Outlet

Ive got a radar detector hooked into the lighter outlet, sometimes it turns on....sometimes it doesnt......other times when it does turn on, after a few minutes it just turns off. Now its not the radar detector because this is the 2nd one that has done this....is there a loose connection under the dash or something?


any ideas?

probably. check the wires going to the outlet and make sure nothing has fallen inside of it

sometimes the lighter connections on those adapters are a pain, does it work if you turn it? thats what I have to do with my cell phone.. not uncommon.

Thats kinda a common problem with the cavs. They never make the dame outlet deep enough so everytime you plug some thing in it either pops out or loses the connection because of the shallow outlet. I just replaced it with a deeper one from the local hardware store.
To this day they still haven't done a dame thing to fix that either I had the problem on my 94, my wife has the same problem on her 2000 and I have the same problem on my new 04

I found it a lot easier to cut the lighter outlet right off, and run the wire directly to an ignition source.. you dont have that ugly wire dangling down your dash... Everything is hidden in the headliner

Thats kinda a common problem with the cavs. They never make the dame outlet deep enough so everytime you plug some thing in it either pops out or loses the connection because of the shallow outlet. I just replaced it with a deeper one from the local hardware store.
To this day they still haven't done a dame thing to fix that either I had the problem on my 94, my wife has the same problem on her 2000 and I have the same problem on my new 04

Ok, I just bought a '94 Cavalier a few weeks ago, and my cigarette lighter doesn't work at all, and i need it for my cell phone. What I am asking is do you think that i may just need to buy a deeper outlet or what? I dunno..lol..if you could email me ([email protected]) or talk to me on aol: mari2314 or yahoo:mari_ziegler just so that i can find out quicker..thanks so much, i hope someone can help me!

check the fuse first 95% of the time this fixes it 3% either the power or ground wire have fallen off and 2% the socket is so dirty and corroded it won't work.

check the fuse first 95% of the time this fixes it 3% either the power or ground wire have fallen off and 2% the socket is so dirty and corroded it won't work.


ok, well, the first thing that i did was i checked the fuse (in the fuse box under the dash) and the fuse for the cigarette lighter wasn't blown, but i changed it anyways just to see, and it still doesn't work.

Go get a new lighter.. they are cheap.

I found it a lot easier to cut the lighter outlet right off, and run the wire directly to an ignition source.. you dont have that ugly wire dangling down your dash... Everything is hidden in the headliner

now did you just cut the lighter wire or did u cut the lighter wire and the radar wire and put them together?

is it hard to put a new lighter in? (i dont know much about cars..lol...typical girl...)

get one of your guy friends to fix it. a girl called me yesterday and said her car wouldn't start because she left the lights on. one of her friends tried to give her a jump but they hooked the cables up backwards i had to rewire almost the whole damn car cause most the wires were melted together.
as for the cigarette lighter it's not that bad 2 wires power in the middle ground on the edge. if you can reach the back of it it just twists apart.