Morris Minor Owners Club

Hi MM Owners.
We are going to France with MOT Whitsun week this Spring. Our first such venture!
I wish to fit an iPhone charger to our Minor. I have been on You Tube but they all require cars with a cigarette lighter.
Can anyone offer advice on where I can purchase one ( make and model number preferably)
and where to take the electrical feed and best place to fit?
Perhaps a picture of one you have fitted to your car?
Sincerely Pete Isaac

We will also be going on MoT to France.

The first question is whether or not your car is positive or negative earth? If it is still positive earth, as mine is, then this makes installing electrical equipment more difficult.

Assuming your car has been converted to negative earth then there are lots of charger sockets you could fit. You can either fit a cigarette lighter type socket and then use one of the chargers that plugs into where the cigarette lighter would go or fit a dedicated charger. To my mind there is no point fitting the cigarette lighter type these days as hardly anybody smokes any more!

With positive earth the socket must be completely electrically isolated from the body of the car and that is entirely possible but there is still the risk of the charging cable metal end touching the car body and if it does it needs to blow a fuse rather than cause a fire......

I decided that it was all too much trouble with a positive earth car and also it being a tourer with very limited space under the dashboard so I have one of those external battery "bricks" that can charge the iPhone several times over.

12voltplanet.co.uk have a selection of charging sockets some of which are weatherproof with discreet covers over the charging ports. You will need to decide whether you want the socket to be always live or live only with the ignition on. Then you need to fit an appropriate in-line fuse that you can access if you need to change the fuse.

Have a look here: https://www.12voltplanet.co.uk/in-vehicle-power.html They also sell a wiring kit that already has an in-line fuse fitted.

Stephen

So fit a lighter/power socket....
then you can use it for other things too.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw= ... face+mount

Stephen has covered quite a bit regarding options. Especially the warning stuff about a Pos Earth car.

Just pick up a solid Green (with no trace colour) Wire behind the dash. Include a inline fuse of a couple of amps.

However, if you're actually going to use it as a Lighter, then take the power direct from the Green at fuse box, rather than risk overloading the existing wiring.
An actual Lighter takes a few more amps to heat the element.

My car came with one...Morris badged... Photo is a bit blurred unfortunately.

svenedin wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 2:25 pm so I have one of those external battery "bricks" that can charge the iPhone several times over.

You can also buy the small lithium based jump starters these days, many of which include usb ports to charge phones with alongside other handy features such as a torch etc. as well as being able to jump start the car in place of a starting handle.

Chief wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 3:54 pm

svenedin wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 2:25 pm so I have one of those external battery "bricks" that can charge the iPhone several times over.

You can also buy the small lithium based jump starters these days, many of which include usb ports to charge phones with alongside other handy features such as a torch etc. as well as being able to jump start the car in place of a starting handle.

Yes those are brilliant. I bought one of those when my modern car had a problem with a frequently flat battery.

Stephen

Regardless of polarity I used a BOAT USB charger. The body is plastic so it needs a seperate earth. This can be swapped around to suit the car.

Very good. This is the ideal solution for either polarity. How did you attach to parcel shelf?

I found a piece of aluminium on the road and used it to make a simple bracket. It is only attached to the parcel shelf with double sided tape. One USB if for the dash-cam and the other goes to a phone holder. Using WAZE is brilliant as the speedometer in the app is more accurate than the cars. ( the white line is a cobweb)

OK. I find my speedometer is very accurate at 20mph and 30 mph when I go past those digital speed displays which are common around here. I don't know whether it stays accurate at higher speeds.

svenedin wrote: ↑Thu May 01, 2025 3:16 pm OK. I find my speedometer is very accurate at 20mph and 30 mph when I go past those digital speed displays which are common around here. I don't know whether it stays accurate at higher speeds.

Me too, once I changed the cable to stop it pulsing around 15 degrees of needle arc...

geoberni wrote: ↑Thu May 01, 2025 4:27 pm

svenedin wrote: ↑Thu May 01, 2025 3:16 pm OK. I find my speedometer is very accurate at 20mph and 30 mph when I go past those digital speed displays which are common around here. I don't know whether it stays accurate at higher speeds.

Me too, once I changed the cable to stop it pulsing around 15 degrees of needle arc...

Funny you should say that.........I changed my cable too and the needle is now very well behaved. It did swing quite wildly at times.

Stephen