SQLGuy

Just wondering whether this was a common failure. When driving the GTS back from Utah, I was kind of counting on being able to charge my cell phone / GPS from the cigarette lighter socket. I found out pretty quickly that this wasn't working. Stopping at a gas station, I pulled the CE cover and checked the fuse... nope, that was OK. Then I bought a screw driver so I could check behind the ashtray. Found some wire taps (probably for the aftermarket stereo), but they weren't the issue. After a bit more poking around (I had brought a DMM with me), I found that the problem was that ground wasn't getting from the ground tab of the ashtray to the body of the lighter socket itself. I temporarily rigged it by attaching the ground wire to one of the springs in the socket body itself and drove home like that.

Today I pulled the ashtray and verified that the aluminum socket that is press-fit into the stamped steel ashtray had several Ohms resistance between the two pieces. Despite the resistance, the mechanical connection was tight. It looked like maybe something had been spilled around the top of the socket, but not down into it. I didn't want to try to press the socket out and back in again, since that seemed likely to result in broken parts or a forever loose fit. In the end I used the dissimilar metals solder I had bought to solder the aluminum to copper of the rear AC evaporator. That stuff (called Muggy Weld) melts at a pretty low temp, so I was able to solder the socket to the ashtray with just a soldering iron.

Works fine now, but just seemed a bit surprising and was wondering if this was a common failure mode.