Cigarette Lighter, socket has power but lighter not working

[timmo666]

Hey all,

So my VE SS has the VE smokers kit fitted which gives you an ashtray and a 12v / cig lighter down the bottom of your dash.

the issue i have is, any 12v plug device i plug in works fine and has power with no issues.

but the actual cigarette lighter itself doesnt stay in when i press it (to heat up)
- and when i hold it in manually (doesnt get much hotter than luke warm and definately never hot enought to make the coils go red)

so i figured that it might be the actual lighter piece itself, and got a new one from holden.
plugged it in, same thing!

there might be something i am overlooking here like, handbrake must be on to use the lighter? or stationary to use it? key to Accessory only?
i've tried a few things but i cannot get it to heat up properly.

i might just add, i NEVER smoke in my car. EVER.
its just handy if i dont have a lighter on me to be able to heat it up and light the ciggy outside of the car.


its just little things like these after gettin a second hand car that are just a minor pain in the arse.

tips/thoughts appreciated,
thanks guys,

Timmo

[RUF-60L]

quit smoking, problem solved! hahaha

just stirrin ya hopefully someone has an idea of whats wrong

[timmo666]

Anyone able to shed some light on this at all?
cheers,
Timmo

[kwaka738]

You may have an issue with a poor electrical connection on the cigarette lighter. Possibly the earth connection on the socket may not be as good as it could be and it might have some slight DC resistance. For example the gauge of wire going to the cigarette lighter might be too light. The gauge of the wire from the earth side of the cigarette lighter socket might be too light. The connection from the earth side of the lighter to the metal earth of the car might not be electrically good enough (which would be my guess). Where the 12V wire to the cigarette socket was connected into the existing wiring might be a poor connection.

When you run something that draws some significant DC current, such as the cigarette lighter, it is most important that all the connections are good quality and the gauge of wire is appropriate (able to run 15Amps or more). If they are not then you will get a voltage drop over the connections (or even the underated wire) and you will not be getting the full 12V across the cigarette lighter so it won't get as hot. Devices that draw lower currents that you plug into your cigarette socket, such as a GPS, won't be affected as much by lower gauge wire or poor connections and will probably work normally.

I would try your cigarette lighter in someone elses car (probably doesn't need to be a Holden) to see whether it works. Try a known good cigarette lighter in your socket as well.

For example if you cigarette lighter has a DC resistance of 1 ohm (and that's a guess) then it will draw 12 Amps assuming all the connectors and wiring are of insignificance resistance. If you have a DC resistance in your connectors of 0.5 ohms then when you plug the lighter in only then there will be a voltage drop of 4V across the bad connectors and wiring and therefore only 8V across the cigarette lighter (the voltage you get across cigarette lighter is a ratio of the resistances). It all work off ohm's law V=IR (V = voltage, I = Current, R = electrical resistance)

Cheers.

[LittleMissVE]

i might just add, i NEVER smoke in my car. EVER.
its just handy if i dont have a lighter on me to be able to heat it up and light the ciggy outside of the car.

I smoke in my car. Not the end of the world.

Good luck with fixing it.

[RiCeY]

Put a multimeter on it and see how many volts you have.