It has taken a few weeks for me to tell anyone about this, rather embarrassing actually. I decided to replace the "cigar" lighter in my 97 Disco with something that would hold a charger. I read up on what others had used, how they did it, and ordered the Dorman 56417

http://www.carid.com/dorman-interior...-26995156.html

Installed it. Then to test it out I pushed in the lighter part of it, it popped out red hot... Success!

Flash forward a few days, I remove the lighter part & plug in the usb car thingy for a standard android phone. It caught fire.

Poke fun if you must! Then please could someone explain what the hell just happened, and why so I can fix it. Please and thank you.

 

That's strange. You did wire the Pos/Neg properly?? Might stick a meter on it to verify correct polarity. I wonder what the bottom of the recepticle looks like? I mean are the contacts so close together that a charger tip could contact the 'ground'?

Have you tried another plug/charger?

BTW, thanks for sharing that link. I might have to do install one of those too (but the ones that don't smoke)..

 

I guess its possible that whatever makes the lighter part hot also had the same effect on your charger?
I bought a 5-pack of these off ebay. Put two in my trail truck and 1 in my daily driver. Amazon.com : Deluxe 12V Receptacle : Boating Electrical Equipment : Sports & Outdoors
Chargers fit properly and won't catch on fire. The best part is I wired the sockets straight to the battery so they're always hot. Meaning I can charge my phone for a few hours without all the truck's accessories wearing down the battery from the key being on.
Daily driver.


Trail truck.

 

That looks like a nice install. Are they internally 'fused'??

 

No. On my trail truck I have an auxiliary fuse box by Blue Sea that all my accessories tie into.
On my daily driver I just tossed in an in-line fuse holder near the trans tunnel on the passenger side.
I used Flag terminals to connect on the back to save room.
Marinco also makes a double USB plug. I have one of those going into my '95 D1 build.

 

The part that makes the lighter hot is the coil in the end of the piece that pops out. It is basically a resistor that gets hot as current flows through it. All the receptacle does is supply 12 volts to the lighter. It is possible that it is wired backwards. The center pin at the bottom of the socket should be positive.

 

you angered the rover gods, lucas the dark lord must be cross with you fiddling with his perfection lol

 

if it were true Lucas they would still be + ground, if they could.

 

So I diagrammed my dysfunction. Here's what I had to start with: the 2 wires on the clip are LGW & Black then the 3rd which is red goes directly to the bulb lighting the ring.



What I did was attach the black wire from the rig to the end do-dad ( I read someone else's post who said they wired theirs this way) and the LGW wire to the outside. I left the red connected to the old light socket with no bulb in it because I can do without the light-up ring.



I tried to read the electrical part of the rave for some answers, but coming off of a 24 hour shift makes the words run together, and it quickly hypnotized me right to sleep.

 

Think you wired it backwards, black should be ground, and hooked to the flat connector on the outer shell of the socket

The green should be + or ignition + and hooks to the plug in, the center of the socket

By wiring it in reverse you probly fried whatever you plugged in