The other day I was cleaning my car and
I noticed it was dirty inside the cigarette lighter 12v electricity
port. Without thinking I took my car key and started scraping the
inside to try to clean it up a bit. Immediately there were sparks! I
didn't even think about the fact that even though the car was off,
there is still power supplied to this port and the metal key managed
to trigger an electrical flow.
Luckily the key I was holding had a
plastic rubber base so I did not get electrocuted but it still
surprised me! I was hoping I did not damage anything serious. The car
started up fine and other power features such as the power windows
were working fine.
Then the next day I went to plug in my
car charger for the phone and it did not work. So apparently the
sparks did cause a problem. I did a little research and found out it
was most likely a blown fuse. A fuse is a little thing that will
break if it is overloaded with electricity which is what happened
when I put the key in the outlet.
I looked them up and they are pretty
cheap, only a few dollars. Also, it looked like it was easy to replace
them which was nice. So I headed over to the auto parts store. I
popped the hood to find the fuse box and the blown fuse. Sure enough, the fuse was clearly broken right in the middle.
I was thinking I would have to buy a
new one but right in the lid of the fuse box, there were a bunch of
spare fuses! The one I needed was there so I was able to swap it out
right away without even having to buy a new fuse. I'm not sure if all
cars have spare fuses like this, but in case you are going to change
a fuse, check the lid in case there are any extras provided with the
car.
So I put in the new fuse, plugged in
the car charger and it was good as new! It was nice to have an easy
car repair that did not cost any money for a change. Lesson learned,
don't stick a key or anything metal in the cigarette lighter / 12v
port even if the car is off.
No comments:
Post a Comment