Cigarette Lighter not working

[soloscott]

Strange problem, I have a 1995 toyota camery LE 2.2 liter 4cyl automatic. I was using my camery to pump up my friends tire with my hand dandy portable tire pump. It just simply plugs in the cigarette lighter. It worked fine for 5 mins or so. Then all of a sudden it stops. I figured the machine got hot and has a thermal cut off. Well this wasn't so. After trying to turn it on again, no go. So i said maybe this thing is broken now. So I tryed using the cigarette lighter, and it wouldn't heatup. So i tired some other things that plugged in a cigarette lighter, and nothing works. I'm a decent repair man. So of course I refered to the manual. It said that the cigarette lighter is on fuse 24, and is 15 amps. So I pull it out and look at it, and it's fine, so I said we'll just try a few brand new ones just in case. So I switched them out, and still nothing. So i unplugged every single fuse in all locations to see if any were bad. Not a single one is blown. I said maybe it's the wiring it self to the lighter. So i removed the cover from the dash and checked to make sure it was plugged in and didn't come lose. Sure enough it's connected just fiine. I tried jiggling it around for a little bit and still nothing. I know that the fuse is good, when you pull out fuse 24 it cuts out the radio, clock, etc... so i know that the fuse is fine. Anybody have any ideas would could possibly be wrong? I use my cigarette lighter quite often, especially since i'm a smoker. So if you have and ideas or suggestions or know of any similar problems please lend a fellow handy man, a hand. thank you in advance for any help!

Scott

[uibalnme]

Check the contacts inside of the lighter socket. They may have worn out. Clean the contacts, or replace the lighter if needed. Good Luck!

[DFBonnett]

Looking at the factory manual for my '93, it indicates that the 15A fuse #8 on the rear side of junction block #1 under the driver's side dash supplies the lighter and the radio.
FWIW
YMMV

[ice745]

I would take apart the dash again, if you put it back together. You know the wire that plugs into the cig-lighter...disconnect that, and use a voltmeter if you have one. Put each probe from the voltmeter into each hole in the wire harness. You won't have to shove them in there, but you may have to put a little pressure to get them to contact the metal contacts in the harness. It doesn't matter the polarity, you'll just either get a positive or a negative reading. If its 12 volts or similar, then it'll be the cig-lighter port's contacts are bad. If its 0 volts, then keep trying for a connection between the harness contacts and the probes. If you're sure you're making contact, and still no reading, we can try to narrow down which wire is bad in this same step. This will require that you know which wire in the harness is positive (negative is usually black, or has a black stripe) connect the positive probe to the positive harness contact. Then the negative probe to ground (any metal part of the chassis, you make have to try different spots, bolts usually work best), if you get 12 volts, then something is wrong with the negative wire to the harness. If you still get nothing, then something may be wrong with the positive wire.

Solutions:
If you get 12 volts at the harness perfectly fine, try cleaning the contacts of the cig. port. They may have burn marks or what have you built up on them. You can use rubbing alcohol and q-tips and try to gently clean it. Or you can even use a small fine file, and gently scratch the marks off. If still no good, you may have to replace the port itself.

If you get 0 volts at the harness, but 12 volts when you connect the positive probe to the harness' positive, and negative probe to vehicle ground. You can either try to find where the negative wire is broken, or just cut the wire and splice another wire (connect the new wire to the part of the wire that is still connected to the harness, and then the other end of the new wire to ground somewhere..you can loosen a bolt somewhere and wrap the end around that, then retighten it...don't do this to any bolts around yellow harnesses or any bright yellow plastic or markers, because this normally symbolizes air-bag wiring, and you don't want to risk shorting that out). Then you should have a working port. You would want to give the new wire enough slack to allow easy install and removal of that part of the dash.

If you get 0 volts at the harness, and 0 volts when you try harness + and vehicle -; this means either the positive wire, or both the positive and negative wire are broken. It is usually really difficult and time consuming to find the breaks, you need to use a continuity meter. But an easy alternative, take your radio out (since they work off the same fuse) and find the positive and negative cable from that. Cut the cig lighter harness from its wires, and run a new two-wire wire from the cig lighter harness to the radio's positive and negative wire. You'll have to cut those two wires to the radio (orange and black, not yellow and black) and make a T splice so that both the radio and cig-lighter are hooked up. You'll probably feel more confident doing this if you have an after-market head-unit, so you can do this to the new wire harness between the vehicle's harness and the radio. If you still have a stock radio hooked up, I'd understand if you didn't want to cut the vehicle's factory wires. So you can go with trying to see if you can find the break in the wire with a continuity reader.

P.S. Keep in mind that the harness itself may be bad, and disconnected from the wires, but still physically in place. This would be bad, and its not easy to fix. However, in that case, you can cut the wires and put them (or put the ends of any new wire you put in there) directly to the contacts on the harness side of the cig-lighter port. Just wrap them around a few times. Then take the harness from the port (which would now be completely disconnected, and put it on the port, so it goes over these wires and holds them down. It is extremely important that you get the polarity right when you splice connections, or make any new connections.