My Car Charger Is Not Working Does My Car Have an Electrical Short?

Possible Causes

1. Bad cellular phone charger wire
2. Bad cellular phone charger base
3. A blown fuse that supplies power to the cigarette lighter port
4. Electrical short at the cigarette lighter port

How do I know if it is a cigarette port fuse problem or car charger

This can be quite tricky so what I want you to do is grab a spare good working charger wire and charger base and plug it into the cigarette port. If it doesn’t power up then you have power supply problem to the cigarette lighter port or possible electrical short at the cigarette lighter port.

Car charger fuse replacement location

What you want to do next is look for the fuse panel location. Don’t be too worried this won’t be too technical for you, you can do this test. Some fuse panel location can be found in the interior of the vehicle or under the hood of the vehicle.

If your vehicle still has it’s owners manual, it will show you exactly where the fuse box location is.

There are two ways that you can check the fuse. You can pull it out to see if it is broken at the contacts and look at it or test it with a circuit tester. You can grab a cheap circuit tester at the auto parts store. Here is what a good and bad fuse looks like below.

How to use a circuit tester on a car fuse

Once you find the location of the fuse that gives power to the cigarette lighter port then you can test it to see if it is good. In your case, I hope it’s just a blown fuse because electrical issues can get really messy and frustrated.

First turn the car’s ignition to the on position without starting the car. Connect your circuit tester to a suitable ground. That means find bare metal without paint on it to connect the other end of the circuit tester too. Then go to the location of the fuse that gives power to the cigarette lighter port. Now every fuse has the two metal tabs at the very top. This is what allows power to pass throughout the fuse because it is connected. When the wire inside of the fuse breaks than power is not allowed to pass through and supply power to its source.

The fuse breaking is a safety feature so that electrical fires do not happen. Use the circuit tester to touch the two tabs on at a time. If the circuit tester lights up when you touch one side and the other doesn’t light up when you touch it, the fuse is no good.

Conclusion

Let’s just say you had a blown fuse and you followed all steps above and checked it, and replaced the fuse. If you replace the fuse and it breaks again, then you have an electrical short in your vehicle. It is now time to seek professional technician assistance.