About to take a trip (with wife/2 kids..)

I have a cigarette lighter adapter that splits off into 4 chargers..

Anyone have any idea how many gadgets I can plug in SAFELY at one time?

Considering there is no Voltmeter in these cars, I don't want to get STUCK with a dead battery??!? on the side of the road in the Mountains!...LOL

2 portable DVD Players, 1 iPhone, 2 more cell phones, and an iPod.. GEE WHIZ!...lol

 

Gonna be on the road for the next few hours, so if you have any insight into this one, please PM me.. That way it will go straight to email and I can check it from my cell phone. THANKS IN ADVANCE!!

 

Once the car is off..electronics do not charge anymore.. at least thats how it is in mine.. SAFE TRAVELS!

 

As long as the car is running and the alternator is good and charging, you can put all the gadget you want, make no difference.

 

Cell Phones do not draw much from the battery or the alternator, as far as the DVD player I would read the specs on it and see how many amps it uses. Normally the cigarette lighter has one of the biggest fuses in the car, but you still dont want to exceed the capacity and blow a fuse.
I can speak from experience on this, as daughter number 2 blew her fuse Sunday night and on her car, the fuse for the cigarette lighter also had the starter on it, hense a dead car, and 85 for the tow. Daughters 1 and 2 now enrolled in AAA, and Dad enrolled in AA from all the stress.

 

I don't think any of the devices you listed are heavy power users. Don't see any problem with running of the power outlet.

 

In my single 12v outlet I have my radar detector, my Garmin GPS and my XM Roady XT. No issues at all.

 

concur that the alt will make the juice you need, and power goes off with the ignition (it is a switched circuit) and that your concern should be about amps drawn as you could blow the fuse.

Depending on your year you can mitigate the situation. When my son blew the cig lighter fuse in the 02-S we discovered the rear outlet still worked. Which led me on a wild goose chase of trying to repair the suspect lighter only to discover the fuse WAS blown and the rear was obviously on a different fuse.... so put some up front and some in the rear if you have the rear accessory outlet.

Also many items have a higher draw when they first power up so try to stagger that .... and my son blew the fuse by plugging/unplugging an item that was powered up which probably resulted in a short term short which blew the fuse .... be careful plugging and unplugging and do so with the item OFF if you can.

adapter/expander gizmos are recommend as I've found the cig' lighter mount to be easy to break after many in and outs of various chargers. An expander left in place and all the gizmos in/out to that save wear and stress on the lighter's plastic parts prolonging life . . .