Safety Warning

Posted by Fish'n Jim On 2021/6/4 16:00:59

That cigarette lighter socket in your classic wasn’t designed to be an auxillary power adapter socket like we have today. I’m old school so I still incorrectly call them cigarette lighter sockets, but the twain shall not meet. Eg: the ones in my ’58 Cad are on a 20A circuit and are made to heat the coil hot enough to light tobacco. That's enough to fry most electronics! Accessory sockets vary but generally are in the 10-15A @ 12 VDC range. Some are listed some not, but they all should be!
First, there’s a plethora of power plugs coming from USA’s “favorite Asian supplier” and there’s no standards like UL listing or ANSI/SAE J563 used on them. The problem is the lack of quality control and race to the bottom pricing on internet fed sales. One has to be particularly wary of the largest internet based sales entity that plays fast and loose with pricing and who you're dealing with. That bargain, might not be one, as it won’t meet the intended use. Even pricey doesn’t guarantee it's well made and safe. I won’t go into how many items I had to throw out due to this because it makes me sick we’d let this happen again. Recall the ‘60s import junk.
Right now, I haven’t found anyone supplying these in any acceptable quality. Why am I writing this, yesterday, had a near miss with a unit powered off such a plug. I had it powered off a separate lead not a socket.
The power adapter plugs come in all sorts of flavors, but few state their rating or power, not most. If it's charging a handheld device, it draws almost no amperage(microA) and not at issue here. Those I speak are higher(>1A) amp uses. I found discrepancies in that the wattage didn’t match with the amp rating. The one I had issues was supplied in a kit and came with an internal fuse. The fuse didn’t blow, as intended, the plastic melted and started to burn. That's failure of a safety device.
The upshot, 1st, don’t plug your accessory plugs in your classic cars cigarette socket and 2nd, beware that cheap plug you bought or was supplied in another product may be a fire hazard. 16 ga copper wire won’t handle more than about 7.5A, but they routinely list them as 15A! Make sure you have the proper wire size for what you’re powering. As length increases, so should wire diameter in DC circuits. There are charts for this.