New Cig lighter for new install....

Anonymous · February 14, 2010, 22:36

My cig lighter is earthing out and basically shot to bits. Blew my sat nav adapter and car filled with smoke....nightmare! Need to change it as im thinking about installing Bose multimedia system in there and getting the adapter for 3 point socket to connect it all. Had a previous install but water is leaking down the doors....have no idea how as all seals seem to be fine? so thought safer way is to have an install where all speakers are away from the doors and sit internally away from all water and issues! (possibly the speakers could sit just on the rear shelf just before the hood comes up and bass bin in the cubby). Anyway need to know where i can get the correct replacement cig lighter from or will any on ebay fit?, and if it was to blow over time again, will it just blow the adapter for the 3plug socket or go direct to the sound system itself? just trying to prevent anymore issues thanks for any input :-) :-) :-)

tigracat · February 14, 2010, 22:46

First off I would find out where the water is coming from and fix that first, careful with cigarette lighters, there's a lot of crap out there, I know from personal experience, when fitting the lighter I would put an inline fuse in just for piece of mind,,,,

Mike

Anonymous · February 14, 2010, 22:55

Yeah i know what you mean, but i kind of dont have alot of faith in fuses atm lol. My last amp blew up and it had 3 fuses in it, one at power line and other 2 in amp. Something shorted it out and the thing went up in smoke! but fuses wasn't touched? Still baffled by it. Well, i'll take your advice on board thank you lol.

tigracat · February 14, 2010, 23:17

Is it not possible that the water ingress penetrated the amp and blew it from source totally bypassing the fuses.

Mike

Anonymous · February 14, 2010, 23:34

what do you think caused it then? as all wiring is how it should be. No wires are exposed and hitting any metals ect. They were working fine for a while without 'spitting' then suddenly after it started raining the speakers were making funny noises and spitting out and thats what happened when the last amp blew, so quickly shut it off before that went up! lol. Even had a car electrician look at it, he said its all fine? and he cant understand it neither but said the amp can go up in smoke and go past fuses depending on where the short is?

muffdan · February 15, 2010, 00:05

Shorting out the cig lighter shouldn't blow anything connected to it. It should just blow a fuse in the fuse box. If water is getting in at the doors, it's more likely that this water shorted out the door speakers. The amp had no short circuit protection in it and therefore it blew the amp.

Could this be possible?

Wabbitkilla · February 15, 2010, 11:01

I agree with Jason here, you've got to stop the water ingress first, the cig lighter has its own fuse and would blow that if there was any reason to.

I don't know what you mean about putting speakers on the back shelf ... just seems a bit odd on a soft top car.

Anonymous · February 15, 2010, 21:13

Well in all fairness im only assuming water WAS getting into it, cant see how but there you go. Even with door off couldnt see any water leakage but that side of the door keeps shorting out the amp? Had it looked at as i said by a professional installer and he cant work it out neither. Anyway, done with that project stressed me out too much lol. So you say cig lighter has its own fuse as standard? then why did it blow my sat nav adapter? I saw smoke coming out of the cig lighter, pulled the sat nav adapter out and the smoke was coming from the adapter!! Now everytime i put in ANY adapter the cig lighter blows it s:-( :-( s:-( (without the smoke this time lol) . Could this just be the sat nav adapter having blown the cig lighter, and now its shorts and blows everything that goes in it? Just trying to make sense of it all really.

wbarrwebster · February 15, 2010, 21:25

Hi,

Surely, next step is to get the lighter out, check the wiring for any fraying, or exposed areas. If it's not the wiring, has to be the lighter itself!

I picked up one from a scrapers and took the opportunity to replace it with one that lights orange at night similar to the dash lights and instruments.

B

muffdan · February 15, 2010, 21:28

This is very strange. There should be no way that a faulty cig lighter can blow anything that's plugged into it. The only thing I can think of is that your battery or alternator is generating too high a voltage, causing the adapters to blow. I would guess there's nothing wrong with the cig lighter and any smoke seen coming from it would have come from the sat nav adapter.

Anonymous · February 16, 2010, 22:48

Oh dear, would this have caused my last amp to blow then if the batt and amp is generating too much power s:(

s:(

cclarke99 · February 16, 2010, 23:16

Too high a voltage is an unlikely cause of the problem, to actually blow anything connected to the car it would have to be high enough to destroy the battery. I'd start by looking at the cigarette socket, I imagine it has been damaged by the sat nav adaptor, whan it overheated. Possibly a poor connection made the adaptor a bit hot, something shorted inside and it then overheated and damaged the adaptor. Now it's probably not making a good connection with any adaptor, causing them to overheat. Fuses won't help with this type of fault. The cigarette lighter has a 15A fuse that means that it will deliver 200W before it blows. Now imagine a 200W light bulb concentrated in your sat nav adaptor - the adaptor will melt long before the fuse blows. The fuse is there to protect the car wiring - not stuff thats connected to the socket and only direct shorts will blow it.

I imagine the same thing happened to your amp. The amp has a current limit which should protect it from shorts, but it will get hot very quickly in this condition, the idea being that the fuse blows before the amp does. Partial shorts, such as those caused by water will cause the amp to run hot untill something burns out, without the current being high enough to blow the fuse. The water doesn't have to soak the speakers, just enough to distort the flexible mounting for the voice coil will allow it to rub on the magnet, wear through and short out. Intermitttent shorts of this sort are a particular problem, as the sudden changes in current may eventually catch out the current limt which doesn't react quickly enough, the transistors will then blow long before the fuse

Finally if you're mounting speakers in the door, you need to make sure the plastic seal covers the back of them so no water running down the glass drips on to them. the seal should be arranged so the speakers are effectively inside the car

Anonymous · February 16, 2010, 23:41

Yes that is what i did, i made sure the speaker bracket was correct way round to protect from water and all bolted back in. To be honest i dont believe it is water. Someone mentioned its a 'possibility'. All wiring is fine, but as soon as i screwed in the speaker with the speaker bracket, it started making funny noises through both speakers and then amp blew. Ive had a look this evening with that 'particular' door and speaker that had been causing problems and have noticed that the screw that goes through the speaker to hold to the plastic mount had been screwed slightly outwards, so it comes out the other end in the direction of the door panel....just. Now would this cause a short as, metal from speaker-touches metal screw-touches metal door? I just cant see anything that could cause this short out.

muffdan · February 17, 2010, 09:10

metal of the speaker should be electrically isolated from the coil. A multimeter will confirm. Also worth checking the resistance of the speaker coil, make sure it's sensible. It could be a faulty speaker.

Are the impedence of the speakers correct for the amp?

Anonymous · February 17, 2010, 14:26

Well, its the same amp i used with my other speakers, rather a heavfty one and no cheapo! The other speakers are exactly the same as these and ran fine?. Put another amp in as last one blew obviously and its trying to do the same to that one, high pitch noises coming through it real deafening which happened before it blew the last one so i turned it off and being trying to rattle my brain for the cause?. It never did this until i removed the spacer on the bracket that the speaker goes into (because the speakers kept pumping into the door panel so wanted to drop them back a bit) The screws originally went in there, that wooden round part. So as i removed that, so only place to then put the screws were through the plastic, thats when the screw shot out the other side and hit door panel. Had problems ever since i removed that wooden spacer part? I cant think of anything else.

muffdan · February 17, 2010, 14:59

I recommend hunting around with a multimeter. It will tell you a lot. First things to check are the resistance of the speaker circuit from the amp terminals with the speaker in place, and also check for continuity between the speaker wires and the car body. Both these checks need to be done with the amp disconnected from the speakers of course.

The resistance of the speakers should read around the rated level of the speaker's impedence and there should be no continuity between the speaker terminals and the car body. If there's any sort of resistance reading between the car body and the terminals, no matter how high, there's a short somewhere and that's your problem. If the speaker resistance is reading much lower than the rated impedence, then there's a short inside the speaker coil itself and the speaker is to blame.