Hello All,
The cigar lighter on my 82 240D hasn't worked since I bought the car 3 yrs ago, but I never needed it, so I never explored why it didn't work. Recently I realized that the darn thing wasn't hooked up, but I can't figure out how it's supposed to be hooked up. I know that it's on the same fuse circuit as the glove-box light and the radio, and I suspect that it was disconnected when an after-market radio was installed.
I have pictures of the relevant parts, but the basic idea is that there's a brass double-pronged post on the back of the lighter that looks like a harness should slip into it. The wiring harness that's hanging loose, however, ends in a white plastic rectangular housing that wouldn't fit on the back of the lighter at all. The white plastic rectangular housing has two slots in it, one horizontal and one vertical--two red wires are passing into one slot, two brown wires are passing into the other.
Some of the spring-loaded parts of the ashtray assembly and the placement of a copper-colored piece (around the backside of the lighter socket) suggest that the circuit might be open/closed when the ashtray is open/closed, but I'm not sure if this is indeed the case.
Any advice if you have familiarity with any of this would be appreciated.
jason