I have been using a radio transmitter to listen to my ipod in the car. The crap came apart without me noticing and a nice piece of metal was lying in the 12V hole starting to heat up. After a while smoke was coming out of the ventilation and the 12V hole was shining orange. Turned off car, removed the garbage and all was fine except the fuses went.

I tried replacing the fuses (interior lights + posterior, and tail) but sparks are flying when inserting new ones and they immediately burn off.

What could cause this annoying behavior? Not sure where to start.

Short somewhere. Probably where the other one was glowing orange...

You melted the insulation off some wires and shorted them, probably in the lighter wiring...

FE, I would guess this 'normally' wouldn't happen with the stock cig plug wiring unless you've severely overloaded it (isn't there a fuse for this?) or the heat damage was caused externally by what was plugged into it. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

THe lighter draws a lot of juice, so the fuse is large amps, and the wiring can get hot enough to melt the insulation withoug popping the fuse. Been there, too, with a triple outlet adapter into the lighter outlet, then a large inverter plus two other loads into that, and the inverter suddenly got a heavy load (18v battery charger).

Hmmm, I wonder how good they are in the gen II's. I'm running a quad plug adapter, cell phone charger, TomTom street gps power, & a 450W inverter off of it (no huge but probably enough) to power my laptop. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/shiner.gif" alt="" />

Well, at least I have a separate 12v Aux jack wired in for the fridge using heavier gauge wire & a 15A fuse (stock fuse is 10A) that can handle the extra load it pulls.

If you find melted wires on the radio console anywhere,
I have numerous pieces I could donate to the repair. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

If something in the chassis wire, passed my pieces. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

That's not a lot of load. Cell charger and Tomtom together may draw an amp or two. Inverter, now, may draw as much as 40, if straight math holds. 450w @ 120v, or a little under 4amps, and if you do a straight transform thats a little under 40a at 12v. This gets a little screwed up as one is ac and the other dc, so one is wrms amps and the other is constant current. At least this is the way the 'lectron 'splained it to me the last time I caught one and got it to talk... 'Lectrons are devious, however, and may have been foolin' old Eddy....