Cig Lighter help please

[Keith]

Our cig lighter in the car happily heats the thing you push in but won't power anything like a phone charger or sat nav.

Any ideas as to what is wrong with it, I've tried to clean the contacts but that hasn't helped.

I'm facing a 1000 mile trip next week with no sat nav and a Mrs who tends to look out the window and miss off ramps :rotfl:

[anewman]

Is the socket correctly seated in the lighter? Are the fuses in the plugs in tact? (Unscrew the end carefully and remove glass type fuse).

[Keith]

Yeah, all the chargers work in our other car, so that can be ruled out.

[molerat]

Do you use it as a cigarette lighter. If so the centre contact can get very dirty so a really good clean with a nylon scourer might be needed. Secondly not all sockets have a full ring of negative contact (a french speciality trick)and some plugs only have one negative contact so try twisting the plug about 1/8th of a turn at a time and you might make contact.

[Keith]

Nope, it's just there to power things.

I'm fairly sure it's worked in any position before, but I'll strip it out tomorrow and clean all the contacts, check that the connections are clean at the rear of it.

[Keith]

I removed it, then tested it with a charger, nothing. Then tested it again with the lighter which worked.

I dropped it to get the multimeter and as I did the end of an old phone charger fell to the floor, it had been stuck in the end preventing the chargers from engaging properly.

Working and I've borrowed a european satnav, I won't get lost now :D