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Hard wire anything into your car

zeffania

1 Armed Warrior
Messages
11,424
The idea of this is to mount a 4 or 3 way cigarette lighter under the dash for you to add your PDA, Speed camera detector, phone charger or whatever leaving your dash clutter free.

What you will need

Inline fuse | 2 x Scotchlocks | Connector block | 3/4 gang ciggy lighter |

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Tools needed are a philips screwdriver and a pair of pliers

First job is to remove the dash around the gear stick. For this you need to stick 2 fingers in at the base of the gaitor pointing down and pull (you need to be in 3rd gear to make it easier), this should pop the bottom part out. Be sure not to go too far just yet otherwise you could cause stress marks. The top part is usually quite tight so you need to move the panel over to the side and stick a screwdriver in (be sure to stick tape on the end so you dont scratch the panel).

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When you have the panel out you need to unclip the cigarette lighter and the hazzard button. Rotate the panel through 180 degrees and stick it in 5th so its well out your way. You now need to strip the plastic housing around the wires going to the cigarette lighter. Once you have done this, take your scotch locks and attach them to the + and - wires.
+ yellow/green
- black
Use only a little bit of wire to join these as there isnt much room to work with behind the gear stick.

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Next part is wiring the power, the inline fuse and the wires to the actual new cigarette lighters. This pic is the easiest way to show it done.

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As far as where you want to put the unit, its up to you. Most of my stuff is near the A pillar on the drivers side so my unit is above my footwell currently sat on the white soft stuff and it doesnt move about so I didnt bother to tie it down.

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This shows where my phone charger comes out and also my switch for my footwell neons all using the 4 way plug.
 
I'm going to be doing this mod, got a question though.

Do you think the voltage would be good and stable if;
I connected the positive from the ciggy lighter to feed the new 4-way, and connected the negative from the new 4-way to the chassis of the car?

This way its one less core to run, and one less connection to make and break.
 
Paul, I dont know mate.

I only connected the + and - up and found that the 2 wires to the 4 gang unit are joined into 1 so its not difficult to run the wires through the car
 
Well I done this mod today.

I have just used a single cig lighter, as I only need it for my Sat Nav PDA. I had enough of trailing a cable across the dash from the original cig lighter.

As you can tell from the pic, I wrapped the new cig adaptor in an old sock to stop any rattles.

Thanks to Ben for the How 2, and for Chris (Black R) for supplying the kit to do it.

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