**E46 DYI: How to make Cigarette Lighter turn ON/OFF with Accessories in 5 MINS!**

This mod is regarding the annoying issue of having a constant power source running to the cigarette lighter. If like me you have accesories such as GPS or an IPOD transmitter in it, it can be very annoying to be constantly plugging your items in and out to save the battery going flat. So today i finally got the time to do something about it!

Ok this mod is super easy and took me approx 5 minutes to do!

First you'll have to remove FUSE# 7 (Orange) for the Radio and Fuse# 47 (Blue) for the cigarette lighter
In this picture the fuses have already been pulled out. Each pin for the fuse has polarity.

Top is NEGATIVE (WHITE) & bottom is POSITVE (RED)




What were going to do is join the Negative from Fuse# 7 and join it with the Negative with fuse# 47.

But before we do were going to have to remove the fuse filament in fuse #47 OR just use a blown fuse.



Then with a strip of wire preferably one with a fuse doesnt really matter we'll join the negative pole of fuse 7 to Negative pole of 47 with the use of a soldering gun.
I would really refrain from just wrapping the wire around the pole incase a strip of the wire comes lose and makes contact with the opposite pole.




Finally put back the fuses making sure that the poles with the soldered wire goes to the pin facing up circled in BLUE.



And thats all folks!
Your cigarette lighter will now turn on and off with the switch of the accessories position.

ENJOY!
Jay

There's gotta be a better way to do this...

There is... its called going to the dealer with a knife and asking them which body part they'd like to do this haha

Originally Posted by ryantheguitarman

There's gotta be a better way to do this...

Sent from my SPH-M900 using Bimmer App

Anyway to re-size the pics? They're too small to see anything......

It's a great idea and a nice DIY but there is no negative side to a fuse. If you had positive on one side and ground on the other you would have a dead short. It is simply in and out.

What you are doing is powering the lighter circuit with power from a circuit that is switched instead of constant.

Good diy but damn man my monitor is 1920px wide and i still can only see half of the image

i just saw jesus' eyes

LOL first time ive ever heard of people complaing pictures too big. You cant scroll to the right??

goodtohave yeah i kind of figured that after i posted the thread, but i suppose it helps which side of the fuse the wire should be soldered onto lol

Click on the picture to resize, it will take you to imageshack link

This is very clever! Couple questions: I see you are using an in-line fuse. How many amps it? Also, wouldn't the lighter outlet now be limited to the 5 amp fuse (minus radio draw)?
If you need more power, you could drive a relay from the radio fuse, and switch the full 15 amps across it. Great find!

digging up an old thread, nonetheless, it worked like a charm!!

I didn't use inline fuse at all. just grabbed a piece of old speaker wire, soldered it in and it worked!

This method works... obviously. If the cigarette lighter fuse ONLY powers the cigarette lighter, then this method is fine. But in many cases, a fuse is tied to more than one circuit. I have seen many times when a cigarette lighter fuse is tied to the dome lights, stereo main power, etc. If this fuse has more than the cigarette lighter tied to it, then I have to say that I disapprove and disagree with this method.

Originally Posted by rrgcsfb

This is very clever! Couple questions: I see you are using an in-line fuse. How many amps it? Also, wouldn't the lighter outlet now be limited to the 5 amp fuse (minus radio draw)?
If you need more power, you could drive a relay from the radio fuse, and switch the full 15 amps across it. Great find!

I would say that is the case yes as he seems to have linked the output of the radio fuse to the output of the lighter fuse so yes would blow the 5amp radio fuse if u tried to power anything over 5 amps instead of the 15 amp it should be able to take...
It could be done with a relay like u say using any switched live to turn the relay on/off.

The other possible way to do it would be to alter the wiring to the back of the fuse box, cut the permanent live that currently supplies the lighter fuse and link the fuse supply to a switchable live (like the supply to the radio fuse) instead.

Clever sure, but I don't see how this can be good for the car.

Fuses are separate for a reason.