power points vs. cig. lighter

I still use the cigarette lighter for charging the cell phone.

What has changed is that people are using those DC-AC converters to run other things (laptops?) and the power points have heavier wiring and fuse protection to deal with the increased current demands.

For instance, I run a laptop computer on a 400 watt converter on trips. Haven't tried plugging in the coffee pot yet ;-)

Greg

i just recently put an additional powerpoint in back in the bed of my pickup, opened up the dashboard to get at the cigarette lighter and powerpoint, the powerpoint had *much* thinner wires, i was afraid to wire up the in-bed powerpoint to it so i connected it to the cigarette lighter. (i cannot recall the fuse sizes though)

b.w.

Has anyone looked at the cigarette lighter winding. Many big amps are need to heat up a lighter. Can't thing of any laptops that need that much juice. Simon

Greg Surratt wrote:

How about a Sony FRV25? I plugged a 400W inverter into my cig. lighter socket (couldn't find a 12v adapter with enough capacity) and hooked up my laptop. It drew so much current the inverter alarm sounded with low input voltage, which I verified by voltage measurement. I suspect the wiring was too small to the cig. lighter. The inverter instructions stated if that happened hook directly to the battery.

Following the Electrical engineers' advice at Ford is the smart thing to do. The cigarette circuit was not designed/rated as a 'continous load' circuit. Yes, it uses a large amount of 'current', but it is of short duration. A Power Point circuit is supposed to be designed/rated as a continous load circuit(s), and therefore safe to use as such.

Dave S(Texas)