cigerette lighter doesn't work

[dmorlow]

Ok, I have a 95 Aurora and it has 2 cigerette lighters. One works and the other one doesn't. I only had my cell phone that plugs into the one but now I am going to have another device that I need to plug into a cigerette lighter so it would be nice if the other one worked. It used to but just quit one day. I am not sure exactly how long. I just noticed a few months ago that it didn't work anymore. Does anyone know how I would go about troubleshooting one not working?

[trevorzane]

Did you check your fuses?? this happened to me the one on the left side quit working..it kept blowing fuses..i checked the back door cigarette ligher and a penny had was lodged in there(kids) so make sure you check those if the fuse is blown..i know the right and left dont run on the same fuse so if its the right one the fuse must be under the back seat cause there is only one cig. lighter fuse in the fuse box by the door....hope that helps

[dmorlow]

I just figured they used the same fuse. That's good to know. That's probably the problem. Thanks!!!

[dmorlow]

But that's amazing that is all the penny did. My last car, I used to store change in my ash tray. One day a penny fell in the cigerette lighter and it shorted out everything in my car. It blew almost every fuse in my car. And after that, my power locks on my doors never worked right again. I always had to push the power locks multiple times to lock my car.

[dmorlow]

Ok, here's an update. I took out my cell phone charger and plugged it into all of the cigerette lighters in my car and the only one that doesn't work is the front passenger one. The rest of them in the car work. So it isn't a fuse. But the one in the front passenger side looks a little wierd when you look at it. It looks like something is missing when you look in the hole. Instead of being all shinny chrome-type metal look to it inside, it has a chrome outside but the bottom of it has a copper tab (I guess it would be called). It kind of looks like there is a sleeve in the hole that maybe when I pulled something out of it once, it pulled the whole sleeve out. Now I need to figure out how to get a new cigerette lighter for that spot and see if it fixes it.

[mike95aurora]

one of them, the right one, only works when the car is on. the left always works. kind of nice for my radar detector

[dmorlow]

Ok, good thing you told me this. I was just about ready to rip apart my whole car to fix it. I tried it and it does turn on when the key is on. I must have always had the key off everytime I tried to use it lately.