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Please could I have some advice about getting an in-car phone charger working. I've been using it in a different car for a while now with no problems. Now I try it in my Honda F-RV and it's not working.

I have two in-car phone chargers, a rubbish one and a better one.
The rubbish one I paid not much more than £1 for on Amazon, so can't expect much from it. The USB connector is dodgy and this has never worked properly.
The good one is an Anker PowerDrive 2 and has worked great in my previous car but doesn't seem to work in the cigarette socket of this car.

When I plug in the rubbish phone charger into the cigarette lighter socket, the red light does come on, so I take that as reasonable proof that the cigarette lighter socket is working.

But when I put the Anker PowerDrive charger into the cigarette lighter socket, nothing. The light doesn't come on and needless to say the phone doesn't charge. I've tried putting the PowerDrive 2 into the other car again since and it worked fine. I then tried putting it in the accessory power socket in the boot of this car and surprisingly, it did work there.

Any advice please? Ideally if there's a simple, safe and effective tweak that I could do to the Anker charger to get it to work in the front 12V/cigarette lighter socket I'd prefer that. I suspect it might be to do with the length of the metal pin that protrudes into the socket, but that's a bit of a guess. Otherwise any other in-car USB charger I could buy that is known to work in that socket?

Thanks in advance

The metal end pin should be 'spring loaded' (you can push it in and it bounces out) and the end of the adapter - the part that goes into the socket - might also be 'unscrewable' to access an in-line fuse which itself may have blown.

Compare the two chargers in length (body and pin) and check that any fuse hasn't blown.

Hi kellys_eye

Thanks for your response

There is a metal spring-loaded pin though it doesn't seem screwable. Its very hard to grip, and hard to turn and when I did make it turn it made a strange noise that sounded like the spring inside scraping against something, definitely didn't seem to be opening.

It's not likely to be a fuse because the cigarette lighter works in that car, and the charger in question works in another car.

However the suggestion of comparing the length is interesting, I suspect the PowerDrive 2 has a shorter spring-loaded pin bit, perhaps this is why it isn't working?

If so is there any safe DIY way to remedy this?

Thanks again

You could try pulling the center pin out slightly. No guarantees that this is even possible though. These chargers are so cheap it's not worth messing with them.

Thanks for that.

I found that the cheapest chargers don't tend to work properly, although even this one which was slightly more expensive than the cheapest still was less then £15.

But I'm mostly concerned about ordering a different one that also doesn't work, not sure how I could tell before buying/ordering whether it will work or not.

Thanks again

Have you checked there is nothing in the bottom of the socket a 2p piece fits perfectly, little fingers like putting things in slots

Having taken change out of car radios and toast out of video recorders anything is possible

Did you say the honda has a cigarette lighter installed it could of burnt the middle contact in the socket


edit. does the socket work ? have you checked the fuse in the car has not popped, its something to do with the socket if the charger works elsewhere

Looking at it this way, if the charger works in one socket, but not another socket, then the non working socket has a problem.
It could be one or a combination of a few things, dirty connection, loose wire, it is no longer perfectly cylindrical (stopping a charger going in all the way) obscure obstruction?

Another thing I have found is if a plug in charger lead is often used, it can break internally, I don't get much more than a couple of years use from mine. As for your comment "how I could tell before buying/ordering whether it will work or not" the answer is simple. You can't.