Cig Lighter in the boat

[Iambjm]

I had installed a cigarette lighter plugin in my boat a couple of years ago, one of the wires fell off. So I hooked a new 16 gauge wire to it, attached to my starting battery in my boat, plugged in my accessory plugin and the wires start to smoke, quickly unplugged it thinking I had hooked it up wrong to the battery. Reversed the wires and tried it again and it melted the wires and fried the plugin. I know I should have had an inline fuse so it would have just blown the fuse but didn't have one handy. What could I have done wrong? Should I have connected it to my deep cycle battery? Wrong size wiring? Any ideas?

[merkman]

Pretty straight forward here....

First step..

Disconnect all battery power And disconnect any items plugged into the socket.

Next

2 wires come out the back of the cig lighter...

Use your multimeter and check for continuity between both wires... you should not have continuity.

Next

Use your multimeter and check for continuity between one wire and the center of the inside of the socket.

That will be your "hot" wire. (+) (red)

Next

Use your multimeter and check for continuity between one wire and the side of the inside of the socket.

That will be your "return" wire. (-) (black)

Next

Place a fuse holder and fuse of the appropriate size inline with the hot wire and the socket.

Next

Hook up the + wire from the fuse holder to the + on the battery and connect the - wire to the - side of the battery and it will work.

When it comes to electricity in this application..... 12 volts is 12 volts no mater what battery is used.

Always fuse ALL power coming from the battery with the proper sized fuse.

And that is about it.

Hope that helps....

-Merk

P.S.

Here is a wire sizing chart to help you select the proper wire size.... these are minimums... when in doubt go bigger And always fuse your power.

.

[Iambjm]

Thanks Merkman, I am going to work on it this weekend. I also need to figure out why my front navigation lights aren't working. Looks like I have my work cut out for me, in the meantime I will just go fishing

[Down Deep]

One more thing. Make sure you fuse it near the battery so you don't have to replace all the wire if is smokes out.

[MichaelSwan]

Great info guys, thanks!