cigarette lighter

alright its a dumb question but im not good at wiring

im wiring my cb up and decided to wire it in the cigarette lighter...

out of the cigarette lighter are 3 wires- orange, purple, and black

which one is positive? negative?

can i just stick the 3(cb, 2 ends of the cut wire) wires in a wire nut and twist them all together?

thanks

You might want to work on asking questions as well...

Especially for anything electrical, you'll want to give with the year at least - wiring changes every couple years, and my manuals may be wrong (but someone else's will.) They won't know it until they know what year (at least) your rig is...

5-90

there should be one that goes to the light, one that goes to the center of the lighter, and one that goes to the housing of the lighter. The center post of the lighter is 12V, the one attached to the housing is ground. Use a multimeter set to continuity test to figure them out if you can't tell visually. Last I had mine apart it was easy to tell
As far as twisting the wires together...don't.
Either solder them, or get some quick splices at the auto parts store of your choice. Twisted wires will not give you a good contact reliably.

oh yeah sorry im tired :doh: :doh:

91 Limited/4.0/AW4 power everything

if you tie in to the lighter power you will get background engine noise. is that an issue with needing better grounds?

Depends on what you're powering. If it's a relatively insensitive load, a little alternator hum isn't going to harm anything. If it's designed to be powered by automotive sources, then it's probably designed to tolerate alternator hum and ignition whine.

If you're powering a relatively sensitive load, AND you've directly hooked up to +12VDC, then think about building a filter circuit. I don't have plans for one handy, but I'm sure you could find several in any Forrest Mims book.

Of course, if you're powering a computer, and it's plugging in to +12VDC via it's own automotive adapter, it's going to have a filter inbuilt, so you won't have to worry about that.

Most inverters will also have filtration inbuilt for alternator whine, but there are quite a few inverters out there that don't put out a true "sine" wave - more like a "square" wave or a "clipped sawtooth" wave - but these do not seem to cause any trouble for most common loads.

5-90

#2 07-18-2004
XJeffro
Forum User Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Indiana, PA
Posts: 55


Re: Cigarette Lighter Wiring / Trans Gauge Install

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i was just in there last week. (this is on my 95 XJ) orange is the dash panel wire and black would be the ground. in mine i believe it was a blue wire that would be the ignition hot lead. hopefully these are the same as yours...HTH
Jeff