My center 12 volt / cig lighter doesnt even light up and does not working when i push the cigarette lighter down. Although my rear boot one works fine.

Its quite a pain running my tom tom or cell phone charger from the boot!

Anyone have this problem? Know how to fix it, know what to do?

 

It is probably only 1 of 2 things. A wire has come disconnected or a fuse is blown.

 

Could also be a bit of contamination at bottom center of receptacle, where the Positive Contact is made.

 

Stop smoking in the car.

 

I had this exact same problem - had the phone hooked up, then had to move it to the back for the GPS. When I moved the phone back to the front, it kept dying - wouldn't charge. Eventually I pushed the charger down just to make sure it was making good contact - it went in another quarter inch or so. Now it works great.

 

When you use after market items like chargers in the cig lighter power source the factory connections which touch the lighter get bent. All you have to do...provided the fuse isnt the issue, is take a small screw driver and bend back the little connector tabs in the bottom so they complete the circuit. The dealer showed me this trick.

 

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Okay, i have never smoked in my car, and what im saying is that it never functioned before.

In order to use after market peripherals like chargers, i have to plug into the back of the boot which is an inconvenience.

I assume i can unscrew the bolts in the cupholder with a torx bit and see if anythings lose?

Matty i'll do what you recommened and check with a multi meter to see if it worked.

 

did u check the fuse?

On a GEN1 rhe front is on the cig lighter fuse and the rear is NOT. I wasted a lot of time b4 I discovered this one day. I checked the rear outlet after the front stopped working. Since the rear worked I decided the fuse was good.

After fumbling around for an hour trying other things I checked the fuse anyway. It was blown of course..... New fuse took about a minute and all was well.

GEN2 might be different, but .... don't take long to check it....

 

Its the 2 little prongs at bottom, Ill see If I cant take a pic..... It is rather peculiar that you never used it beore and it wont work. I bet the fuse or the bent connectors.

 

I wish MINI had put a better quality cig lighter in the car. I have to be very careful when I use it for my GPS. The whole socket will pull right out of the panel when disconnecting the GPS plug. I have to use two hands (one on the plug and one on the socket) to work it out without pulling the socket out with it. Is it possible you may have yanked a wire off the socket doing this?

 

Do the amber rings around the cig lighter light up at all? Both my DC ports works but the rings don't light up even when I have the headlights on.

 

the amber ring does not light up. only the back one.

Where is the fuse for the cigarette lighter? Under the bonnet or front passenger? Anyone know what number it is?

 

I did a search trying to find out if my amber ring should light up (only had my car a couple of months and just realized it wasn't lit at night) and found this comment. Why on earth would the amber ring not have the ability to light up? It's not like there is no power there...

I think that was a dumb design decision

 

Apparently some of them light up. I checked realoem and the diagram indicate that there's a part for the bulb, but I opened up my center console and there's no bulb, no wiring for the bulb either. Could be part of a package.

 

This happened to me also, the entire lighter socket is out of the hole. Going back for service. I have had at least 15 cars in my lifetime & NEVER has a cigarette lighter popped out.

 

NAPA carries a cig lighter with the lighted amber ring that fits the hole and has a screw on outer shell to keep the lighter from pulling through. If you use it you will need to change the wiring plugs.

 

The fuse is the third one down I think.
On the first row closest to the passenger seat.
20A (yellow)

I found both my outlets are on the same fuse.

If one works and the other doesn't my guess not the fuse.

Good call on the NAPA part I'll go find one.

 

As a firefighter, i use my 12v socket for my blue light. In a hurry i broke the amber ring around the plug. It still lit up, but looked like crap. Luckily, there is a ring around the plug in the boot. The plug in the boot is much easier to take out, since there is no LED attatched to the ring. I thought the glowing ring was annoying so i replaced my front with no light. however, it seems like you could easily switch the light over and fix the front plug. since i never used the boot plug, it held fast when pulling out my chargers.