Auxiliary Power Connector / Cigarette Lighter
I added an additional cigarette lighter to my car as an auxiliary power source for my dash cam. I plan on keeping it buried in the dash with the dash cam charger cable plugged in. (I plan to route the line up along the A pillar and to the cam but as luck would have it, the cable broke so I'll be soldering and fixing that crap tomorrow)
For this, I picked up the cheapest cigarette lighter that AutoZone carried. I think it was around $3 and change. I then fabricated some wires with some quick disconnect plugs. I chopped off the pole plug that was in the cars wiring harness for the cigarette lighter and swapped it for a female disconnect plug. The wires I made had two male disconnect plugs to plug into the now modified cigarette wiring harness, then a branch for the original cigarette lighter using the original pole plug and male disconnect. For the new cigarette lighter, I just used two male disconnects as the new one didn't require a pole connector. For all the ends, I soldered the wires in and the wrapped them in heat shrink tubing. Where the new wiring I made plugged into the existing harness, I connected the connectors and wrapped them in electrical tape so that nothing could accidentally touch. (Blowing a fuse).
Here's some pics:
Here's some pics of the positive cable. You can see how the branch was done and how the connectors where set up:
Here's the whole new wiring harness for the dual cigarette power outlets:
Close up of the heat shrink tubing on the connectors. I went to the very tip so that they couldn't accidentally touch anything they weren't plugged into:
Here's the new port sitting just popped out the side of my lower dash on the passengers side. Once I fix the cable, I'll plug it in and tuck it back behind the kick panel.
I used the same gauge wire as what was already there. It's still powered by the same 20 amp fuse. I don't plan on ever hitting both cigarette lighters at the same time. (I stopped smoking a few years ago
) At most, one will be running the dash cam and the other might run a GPS. If that pulls 20amps... something is wrong. 
I added an additional cigarette lighter to my car as an auxiliary power source for my dash cam. I plan on keeping it buried in the dash with the dash cam charger cable plugged in. (I plan to route the line up along the A pillar and to the cam but as luck would have it, the cable broke so I'll be soldering and fixing that crap tomorrow)
For this, I picked up the cheapest cigarette lighter that AutoZone carried. I think it was around $3 and change. I then fabricated some wires with some quick disconnect plugs. I chopped off the pole plug that was in the cars wiring harness for the cigarette lighter and swapped it for a female disconnect plug. The wires I made had two male disconnect plugs to plug into the now modified cigarette wiring harness, then a branch for the original cigarette lighter using the original pole plug and male disconnect. For the new cigarette lighter, I just used two male disconnects as the new one didn't require a pole connector. For all the ends, I soldered the wires in and the wrapped them in heat shrink tubing. Where the new wiring I made plugged into the existing harness, I connected the connectors and wrapped them in electrical tape so that nothing could accidentally touch. (Blowing a fuse).
Here's some pics:
Here's some pics of the positive cable. You can see how the branch was done and how the connectors where set up:
Here's the whole new wiring harness for the dual cigarette power outlets:
Close up of the heat shrink tubing on the connectors. I went to the very tip so that they couldn't accidentally touch anything they weren't plugged into:
Here's the new port sitting just popped out the side of my lower dash on the passengers side. Once I fix the cable, I'll plug it in and tuck it back behind the kick panel.
I used the same gauge wire as what was already there. It's still powered by the same 20 amp fuse. I don't plan on ever hitting both cigarette lighters at the same time. (I stopped smoking a few years ago
) At most, one will be running the dash cam and the other might run a GPS. If that pulls 20amps... something is wrong.
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