Quick question, The cigarette lighter in my 02 TA is busted, and I am just going to remove it completely, the wires from the lighter itself are too short to deal with, and i do not need it anyway. I wanted to know if i need to run a resistor between the two remaining wires in the harness, and if so, what resistance in ohms should I use? I am not comfortable wiring them together unless i know it is safe to do so, i don’t want to short anything outNormally, I would just close them off separately, but i am aware that this disconnection also affects the obd2 port, so at the moment i can not scan for any issues.

Thanks!

 

If you are just removing the cigarette lighter, don't put a resistor and don't short them together. You'll get some arching and a blown fuse (and possibly melted wires).

Cover the ends with electrical tape and secure them to keep them separated from each other and not touching anything else.

Otherwise, why not just replace the cigarette lighter? It is a handy power port for phone chargers and other things.

 

I'm keeping the auxiliary port, so covered there. what about the OBD2 port? I am not getting any power to that, i'm getting ready to go to the garage and work on it a bit, and see what is going on, but i have heard that the OBD2 and the cigarette lighter run on the same circuit, and removing the cig lighter will cause the OBD2 to not work, no power to my scanner, and no power at the pins. Going to look into it further

 

Partly correct... the OBD2 port does run off the same fuse (circuit) as the lighter, but not having a lighter socket will not impact the OBD2 port in any way. The two wires at the lighter socket are not connected to each other except when you plug something into the socket, so that would mean that your OBD2 port would only work when you were lighting a cigarette (obviously not the case).

Have you checked the CIG/ACCY fuse (25-amp #11)? If it's blown then your lighter socket, power outlet, and OBD2 port will all stop working... could that be the reason for thinking the lighter is busted? There's almost nothing that can go wrong with the lighter socket itself except corrosion of the contacts. Never rely on a visual inspection of a fuse - especially a 23-year-old one - always use a multimeter or fuse tester or just replace with a known good fuse.

 

I've heard of a coin falling into the cigarette lighter and blowing the fuse. If the fuse it blown, look inside the cigarette lighter for anything that shouldn't be in there before replacing the fuse.