today i was hooking ip LED's to the front bumper holes...the wires leading to the cigarette lighter touched eachother and my stereo went dead...and i thought s**t! so now my near new pioneer deck isnt turning on or anything but when i called the audio people they said check your cars fuses etc first.

i checked the voltage coming from the ciggarette lighter after the short and there is no voltage reading so im assuming and hoping that theres a fuse blown somewhere...wats is everyones opinion, any advice...i checked teh main fuse to the right of the steering column in the car under cig lighter and radio and it looks fine

any advice greatly appreciated.

check the CRT LMP fuse!

My EL Futura has the same problem after using a faulty? mobile phone charger. Fuse is OK but no power to the cigarette lighter. Anxiously await some expert comment - thanks.

Thanks Ugly Bob - should have said my radio is OK but have now checked the CRT Lmp fuse which is AOK (as you would probably expect). Is there a main fuse/circuit breaker which feeds the radio fuse circuit? I have a Gregory's manual No: 270 but it is not all that clear on this. Thanks for your time & assistance

i had similar prob in eb fuse ok and no radio or anything .. i just replaced the fuse and disconnected the ciggy lighter and it was fine .. maybe try that and see what happens failing that sorry guys ... i dont know .. cheers

So you touched Black (ground) with Red (power)??

Besides checking the fuses, i cant think of anything else that could be a problem. I remember i touched my power and ground in the boot for the boot light. it just drained my battery :S

But if everything else is working :S

Some experts on here will be able to help.

Since reporting my problem as above I took the car to an auto electrician. He said that there is a 'fusible link' at the rear of the cigarette lighter which blows before the fuse - that is why the radio will continue to work but the cigarette lighter won't. He removed the radio surround panel and replaced the fusible link with a piece of ordinary auto wire. He said that in future the appropriate fuse will blow in case of a short (apparently mobile phone chargers are prone to this problem). I can't understand why Ford would inroduce a fusible link in a circuit to "protect" a fuse! Anyway, it's the best $22 I ever spent to determine & fix the problem.