Sat Nav in car charger lead falls out of socket

UsFour

I have a Garmin Satnav ... the in car charger lead when connected into the cigar lighter in the car ... will not stay in the socket. At the moment I am using a bean bag door stop thing to hold it in place otherwise the sat nav runs out of power.

I have changed the cigar socket (from scrap yard) still doesn't work ... is there anything I could do to the lead to make it stay in the socket?

Thank you

fwor

It's not an easy one to solve because, as standards go, the cigar lighter socket is very poorly standardised.

If you take a close look inside the socket, you may find two indentations which if you're lucky can coincide with the lugs on the plug when the orientation is right - but some sockets are simply too shallow for some plugs.

Another approach might be to try a "plug to socket" extension, in the hope that the plug on the extension suits your car better...

Failing that you could wire a better-designed DC socket (such as those used on laptops) in parallel with the cigar socket and replace the plug on the Garmin lead.

Farway

You could try a bodge of tin foil wrapped around the barrel of the plug, make sure you do not short out the + & - though

UsFour

Yes I think it probably is the cigar lighter socket which is too short to hold the plug. I might try an extension socket as these are reasonably cheap to
buy to see whether it makes any difference.

In relation to the tin foil ... this sounds quite interesting as I feel if I could get something which would hold/jam the plug into the socket (instead of the positioned bean bag :rotfl:) this could be the solution.

However ... why does it have to be tin foil? Could it be, for example a piece of cloth, or elastic bands ...... does the tin foil serve a specific tin foil function?

bingo_bango

It's conductive. Elastic bands aren't.