God, I miss Barry's genius already! I'm wondering if it's OK to connect directly to a sat-nav with a lead simply wired to the existing wiring of the cig lighter base (not including the lighter base just the wiring to it)? Or, should there be some sort of additional fuse or power adjustment(?) 'gizmo' ?
if you are talking about hardwiring the charger that usually plugs into the cig lighter straight into the car so that you dont have to rest your arm on it whenever you go driving? then yes that is possible and not very hard, you dont need anything other converters or anything like that, you can either find an old cig lighter socket or you can buy one from somewhere like jaycar, and basically wire that to the same wires that the existing cig lighter uses and plug in the charger for the gps, tape it up and hide it away. you can also do it without the cig ligher socket but its just easier to do it that way usually.
Thanks Owen... understand that OK. What I was originally asking was whether I needed to use the sat-nav (charger?) plug or whether I could remove the sat-nav end plug and just connect the wires direct to the old cig lighter wiring. Reading your reply I think the answer is NO! I need to use the (charger) plug either wired as you mentioned or plugged into a multiple cig lighter socket...?????
No, Most sat nav power cords have a voltage reducer down to around 5v in the cig plug. If you cut of the plug & put 12v on the wires you will damage your nav. Its best to use an inline cig socket & wire that up to 12v & then plug your existing sat nav cord into it & run that up to the nav.
Exactly what I thought! Thanks Carter, you've explained it perfectly so a dummy like me can understand.
You can get a Cigarette lighter "Power socket" from supercrap, which is basically the cig sized power socket with the 2 wires coming from the base. You could plug your charger in and tape that in place (so the 2 won't easily separate), and then hard wire the socket to your heart's content. Something like this??? http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/1-5m-Car...09?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_15&hash=item415ef1a7ed
