Dropped Ciggy Lighter

[tobeee]

The housing for the fag lighter has dropped into the door arm-rest thingy on my chim. Is there a simple way of removing the leather arm-rest lump to fix this without removing the door skin?

[Trefor]

I think you need to remove the speak cover (tiny screwdriver around edge of grille), then remove the speaker - this will allow you to get your forearm into the inside of the panel - hopefully you can just push the ligher socket out.

[P1GNG]

Can confirm the above - it does work! I had exactly the same prob & solution 3months ago!

[li'l pugs]

How odd.......mine just gone and done this too.......
Oh well, something else to try this weekend now....

[tobeee]

I'll be trying to fix it this weekend, but am wondering how it fixes in place once you push it back through the armrest. It's going to take a fair bit of abuse as I'll be pushing a phone connector into it daily, so the clips/brackets or whatever must be strong... are they, or is there a modification I can try?

[yiw1393]

The lighter socket is in 2 pieces, the bit where you plug in the element bit and an outer sleeve that screws onto it from below and has a larger diameter than the hole it goes through. There are 2 wires off the bottom - live and earth. The earth wire is connected to the outer sleeve by a spade connector. Undo this and unscrew the sleeve. Drop 'inner' through hole in armrest from above, and screw sleeve onto it from below, effectively clamping armrest between the 2 bits.

Hope this helps.

[IPAddis]

... and then when you have reassembled the two halves and screwed them together, don't forget to replace the fuse which you will almost certainly have blown in the process.

[tobeee]

No luck there then! Took the speaker off (piece of cake!) but the window mechanism blocked my route any further. I couldn't find any screws to remove the armrest bit or the window motor to make way for my skinny arm, so put the speaker back on instead. I have managed to unscrew and retrieve part of the lighter through the lighter hole, but the main bit is obviously bigger than the hole! Might just have to crush the tin casing to get it through and then reshape it afterwards... what a failure!

[K4TRV]

tobeee said:

No luck there then! Took the speaker off (piece of cake!) but the window mechanism blocked my route any further. I couldn't find any screws to remove the armrest bit or the window motor to make way for my skinny arm, so put the speaker back on instead. I have managed to unscrew and retrieve part of the lighter through the lighter hole, but the main bit is obviously bigger than the hole! Might just have to crush the tin casing to get it through and then reshape it afterwards... what a failure!

I don't think it's down to "luck" Think you will have to persevere with the speaker off. Raise/lower window to enable arm to get past mechanism (NOT whilst arm is anywhere near speaker hole !!). It's the only way the door inner and armrest etc was fitted. i.e. through the speaker hole to the securing bolts and having removed door inner you can re-fit lighter - I doubt you'll do it any other way. (oheyedontnow - drill a hole thro' outer door skin......;-(( )

I'd hate to see the state of the lighter after "pulling" and reshaping!!!!!

[tobeee]

Actually, now you come to mention it, I might have been tackling this with the window down! What a chump! I'll try again this week!