Morris Minor Owners Club

I know there is a thread further down about this, but I don't understand it, sorry.

My car is negative earth (she had already been done - I got the guy at the garage to check!) so that is sorted.

Can someone explain with pretty pictures if possible (and preferable), how I fix in a cigarette lighter?

I have something similar to this - http://washford.scene7.com/is-viewers/f ... ze=450,507

What else do I need, where do I connect it to, agh!

Find somewhere to actually fix the lighter to, you may have to buy a bracket. As I use mine for charging phones, running sat nav, camping lights etc, I have drilled a hole and put it out of site under the dash. The body of the lighter should earth directly to the body of the car, direct contact metal to metal. The wire on the lighter then connects to the fuse box terminal with the purple wires which will be permanently live as you will still want to use the lighter accessories with the ignition off.

Simple terms with pictures if possible please!

The body of the lighter, meaning this bit?



With a wire?

And the wire that connects to the fuse box? There are 2 bits coming off the lighter, a red wire & a black one. The red one has a flat connector type thing & the black one is like an electrical wire with the ends showing;



Give me a cake to bake & I am a fine, a car, however...well, I need practice, shall we say.

the wires that you've got on your lighter already are to illuminate the green housing around the lighter socket. these are normally wired in to come on with your sidelights so you can find it in the dark. i didnt bother with the green bit. slid it off and threw it away!

the two 'spades' in your first picture are the important ones. one must have a live feed, from the fusebox. the other must be earthed to the body of the vehicle. i can't remember which way around they go though, sorry! i have a feeling the spade that is connected to the 'inner' bit of the lighter socket should be live, and the outer part to earth.

i'm sorry i can't help much. i'm rubbish with electrics!

The two spades are the important ones. The green cylinder attached to the lighter is simply a backlight. The inner spade (the one lower down in your picture) is positive, the outer one is earth. I made my bracket out of a small plate of aluminium. I drilled lots of holes with a medium sized drill bit until I could get a file in and kept on filing until I could push the lighter through the hole and screw it down. Then I bolted the plate to the rib that runs along under the dash like this:




You cut cut the corners off and file it round to make it a bit prettier but like this I figured I could add some extra switches either side if I wanted to later on. Earthing it is easy, to power it find out which side of the fuse box is live. Pull off the plastic cover and use something to find which side is live all the time. This could either be a bulb with two wires, one of which you can earth and touch the other to things to see if the bulb lights up; or a multimeter which is cheap and essential for tracing electrical faults and testing earths. With the ignition off, one side of the fuse box will give 12v and the other will be 0v. Turn the ignition on and the one that was 0v should turn into 12v. There should be a free spade connector on this side of the fuse box, so run a wire from that free spade through the dash to the back of the lighter socket. Put a 10 amp fuse inline as close to the fuse box as possible. You can get a proper in line one or simply cut the wire and put two female spade connectors on and plug a modern blade fuse in.

praps a bit of terminology explanation might help:
"Earth" in this case is your car's body. Think of the body of your car (the metal) as one huge electrical wire, connected to one side of your battery. In your case, the negative side (hence.. negative earth).

"Live" means a wire which is connected to the positive side of your battery. Red wires normally (almost always)= positive wires. Somewhere around the fuse box, there will be a wire which is always live, which then feeds things like lights and ignition via switches and fuses. You can probably locate this by tracing the wire visually from the battery to the fuse box (don't use the really thick one whcih goeds to th starter motor though!)

You need to connect the casing of the ciggie lighter to the negative side of the battery, and the spade connector which comes out of the centre of the end of the barrel to the positive side- but to be safe, you need to do this positive part via a fuse.

If you mount your lighter in the car as Nuffles shows in his pics, then the lighter casing (ie the round outer barrel) is 'earthed' and effectively connected to the negative side of your battery. That's one done.

Next, you need to connect the middle spade connector to something on the moggy which always has battery power going to it, but for safety you probably ought to put a fuse 'inline' as well.

If you buy an inline fuse (eg from halfords- it's a small plastic tube with a fuse in it, and a wire out each end) they normally come with a fair amount of wire attached. Effectively, you want one end attached to the positive side of the battery, and another connected to the spade in the middle of the lighter barrel. You'll need a 'female' spade connector for that (halfords again- they sell them in packs of about 10). This clips onto the spade at the end of the lighter,and has a thin tube at the other end into which you stick the wire (strip the end of plastic on the wire so that you have a metal to metal contact,and squeeze the tube shut with pliers to hold the wire firm).

At this point, I become uncertain where you'd find a positive point on the moggy, other than connecting directly to the positive side of the battery itself, so better to refer to Nuffles' post for that.

I've mentioned halfords because I know they sell this stuff, but you can probably get it a lot(!) cheaper elsewhere. Sorry I can't draw pictures - ran out of time!

melanddoug wrote:praps a bit of terminology explanation might help:
"Earth" in this case is your car's body. Think of the body of your car (the metal) as one huge electrical wire, connected to one side of your battery. In your case, the negative side (hence.. negative earth).

"Live" means a wire which is connected to the positive side of your battery. Red wires normally (almost always)= positive wires. Somewhere around the fuse box, there will be a wire which is always live, which then feeds things like lights and ignition via switches and fuses. You can probably locate this by tracing the wire visually from the battery to the fuse box (don't use the really thick one whcih goeds to th starter motor though!)

You need to connect the casing of the ciggie lighter to the negative side of the battery, and the spade connector which comes out of the centre of the end of the barrel to the positive side- but to be safe, you need to do this positive part via a fuse.

If you mount your lighter in the car as Nuffles shows in his pics, then the lighter casing (ie the round outer barrel) is 'earthed' and effectively connected to the negative side of your battery. That's one done.

Next, you need to connect the middle spade connector to something on the moggy which always has battery power going to it, but for safety you probably ought to put a fuse 'inline' as well.

If you buy an inline fuse (eg from halfords- it's a small plastic tube with a fuse in it, and a wire out each end) they normally come with a fair amount of wire attached. Effectively, you want one end attached to the positive side of the battery, and another connected to the spade in the middle of the lighter barrel. You'll need a 'female' spade connector for that (halfords again- they sell them in packs of about 10). This clips onto the spade at the end of the lighter,and has a thin tube at the other end into which you stick the wire (strip the end of plastic on the wire so that you have a metal to metal contact,and squeeze the tube shut with pliers to hold the wire firm).

At this point, I become uncertain where you'd find a positive point on the moggy, other than connecting directly to the positive side of the battery itself, so better to refer to Nuffles' post for that.

I've mentioned halfords because I know they sell this stuff, but you can probably get it a lot(!) cheaper elsewhere. Sorry I can't draw pictures - ran out of time!

I think a combination of both our posts might actually be of some help I've read mine back and realised that if you don't understand some of the things I'm talking about it still wouldn't make sense *facepalm* thank you for clarifying some of the things I was saying.

Thank you so much! That makes it all much clearer

So now I have a job for Saturday!

I'll just add this.................
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Morris-Dash-Light ... 4cf6d42d74

Nuffles wrote: thank you for clarifying some of the things I was saying.

Teamwork!

I have all the bits I need, I know how to wire it up, however...

I can't figure how to work the bloody multimeter!!

I took the cover off the fusebox like you said, put the black side of the multimeter on the side of the car & touched the red side on various bits of the fusebox and got noooooottttthhhhhiiiinnnnnnggggggg!!

This is what I have -




Ugh!!

You should have the meter set on 20V DC. If you touch the red pointer to the pos terminal of the battery and the black to the neg side then you should get a reading betwen 12 and 14 V. That will show you that it is working correctly.
When you are checking make sure that you touch the pointer on bare metal, thick paint will not conduct elecricity

on that meter the rotary switch needs to point to DCV 20 which is at about 9.30 in that pic. The black probe should connect to Com and the red to the other plug.

It's working!

But where do I put it to on the fuse box to see where to connect the spade connector? Pffftttt!! I might not bother after all this.

I have even managed to lose the cover for the fusebox whilst trying to fit the bloody thing!

press the black against a bare bit of metal, preferably on the body.. though if the engine earth cable is go dthe engine block will do! then press the red wire on to each spade connector in turn, with the igntion on, and see which ones give you 12v... then repeat with ignition off and see which ones give you 0v now, but 12v with the ignition on. use one of those.
make sure you havent left that cover in the engine bay before you go anywhere!!!

If you want to use the lighter whilst the ignition is off (I use mine for plugging in airbed pumps and tent lights) Then connect the wire to the same terminal on the fuse box as the purple wires so that it will be permanetly on. It does not consume any current when not in use so it will not flatten your battery.

agreed, but if you leave your phone on charge plugged in, or your ipod... or i think she was talking about leaving a portable docking station plugged in, which youd probably leave connected, then i recommend having it on ignition, afterall its no trouble to turn the ignition on to inflate an airbed!

If you want to charge your phone then you can leave it out of sight with the ign.off and the car locked.

Agreed - don't chance someone breaking into the car just for a phone. Tuck all extra wiring away out of site when you're not with the car. What they can't see they can't steal!