2001 MX5 cigarette lighter

[TVRCC PR]

A friend of mine was recently given a 2001 MX5 as her birthday present and has managed to blow the 20V fuse powering the cigarette lighter using it to power a tyre compressor. Or so I thought. Having pulled the fuse to replace it it is fully intact and passes continuity testing. The 12V power socket earths correctly but has no +ve feed and there appears to be no power to the fuse holder. Everything else works fine. Is there another inline fuse anywhere that I should be looking for or is there something else I've missed?

Many thanks

[Oldandslow]

You could try the footwell fuse box. Certainly on the older cars there's a "cigar" fuse.

Mounted behind a panel on the side, just to the front of the driver's door(UK cars). You need to be a bit of a contortionist to get a good look at it.

[TVRCC PR]

Thanks - that's the first fuse box I went to.

[Oldandslow]

The only other thing I can think of is the fusible link on the back of the lighter socket itself which you can bypass.

I really doesn't explain why you've no power at the fuse holder though. Never heard of another fuse specific to the lighter. And nothing else is dead.

[TVRCC PR]

No, everything else is working fine as far as I can tell. The only thing that I thought was odd was that the fuse marked cigar was at the bottom of the fuse box whereas all of the fuse box arrangements I had see online showed it near to the top. I suppose I should have pulled all of the fuses 1 by 1 to see if there were any that had blown but we were doing itoutside and it just started to rain!

Haven't tried to take the socket out as she's got the veneer dashboard and I couldn't easily see how the panel came out and was reluctant to fiddle too much in case I damaged it.

Many thanks

[feef]

TVRCC PR said:

No, everything else is working fine as far as I can tell. The only thing that I thought was odd was that the fuse marked cigar was at the bottom of the fuse box whereas all of the fuse box arrangements I had see online showed it near to the top. I suppose I should have pulled all of the fuses 1 by 1 to see if there were any that had blown but we were doing itoutside and it just started to rain!

Haven't tried to take the socket out as she's got the veneer dashboard and I couldn't easily see how the panel came out and was reluctant to fiddle too much in case I damaged it.

Many thanks

I remove the center tunnel and stereo to make removing my 'tombstone' easier. The lighter just pushes through from behind once out. You may need to rotate it and/or push some tabs back to make it's exit easier, but it's not difficult.