my car cigarette lighter

works if you try and heat up the thingy to light cigarettes but i bought an ipod dock and it's not picking up any power from it, so i cant turn it on other things will pick up power when in the right position (i can tell when that is if a light turns on e.g. in car phone charger which is why i cant turn the ipod thing on coz it doesnt have a light) it is quite dirty and has got some dust and crumbs in it i think. Do you reckon thats whats causing it?

I'd suggest trying to clean out the lighter. Sometimes crumbs or junk and be blocking a small spot and your charger isn't sitting right when you put it in. It's worth a shot.

Yeah, try cleaning it out first...

I have heard that some cars have the polarity of the lighter reversed. Not sure if it varies by country (ie, the US is different from the UK), but it's possible.

It could be possible that the center "pin" of the component doesn't make contact with the conductive surface inside the lighter due to its shape or something. Something cheap to try would be to pick up a simple splitter (device that lets you plug in two cig lighter components at once) and try that out.

other things have worked before and i'm pretty sure it's nothing to do with the way the lighter works.

We've got a splitter somewhere round here so i'll give it a clean and then if its still being funny give that a go cheers

I would say that the crap in the socket is probably what is causing the problem. A few well-placed crumbs can prevent the thing from making contact.

Let us know how it goes. Be sure you don't shove anything conductive in there like a wet rag, and obviously don't spray anything into it. A can of compressed air works beautifully if you have one.

It's also possible that the fuse for the socket has blown. Do any other devices work *right now*?

i just got told to leave the car along apparently it's been dodgy since my mum had the car so my dad just took the cigarette lighter out the other car and is now fighting to get the old one out of the housing, but the old car's one was never used at all ever, however the car i have was an emergacy buy for my mum and obviously had a smoker as a previous owner as theres a hole in the passenger seat, so it's rather grubby.

I think dad's also just checked the fuse and seems rather focused on changing it.