Due to the ever increasing bits of tech that we carry in the car AND the fairly stupid place that they have put the cigarette lighter, I have been looking at putting some extra sockets in the TF.
Ideally I wanted a few extra sockets and a couple of USB sockets too as most tech now takes mini or micro USB to power them.
I wanted something that wasn’t obvious and wanted to keep the existing lighter socket. I have fitted similar in DeepBlue, but that was because the lighter socket has been replaced by the cruise control switch.
When I was in ALDI the other day I spotted this at £3.99.
First of all, I removed the lighter socket so that I could get at the cables.
The loom is very short and you will also need to take the gearstick trim, the ash tray and the handbrake gator off.
So that you can feed the plug and wire from the lighter out through the handbrake hole. This will give you enough cable to play with.
Check which cable is the positive on the socket.
And check which cable is the positive (centre connection) in the adaptor
And mark it.
Feed the adaptor cable up under centre tunnel.
Strip the cable ends
And cut the positive supply to the lighter socket. You might want to remove the fuse first.
Join the positive wire of the adaptor and the positive supply from the loom, twist them together
and crimp them into one end of an inline crimp and crimp it.
Now insert the positive cable from the socket into the other end of the crimp and crimp it.
And do the same with the negatives
You can now put the fuse back in.
The little LED on the adaptor should now be on.
Now feed the socket back through the handbrake hole
and connect back up to the cigarette lighter.
Put all the trim back together.
Now feed the cable under the side panel
Clean the bottom of the adaptor and the area where you are going to stick it to using thinners to remove any grease etc.
I used no more nails type stuff
And stuck it on the floor behind the console. There is a nice groove behind there that it sits in well.
I like this area as it is out of view and you can run the cables down behind the dash.
Well, that’s it folks. You should have all the sockets you will ever need now.
Enjoy.