roop_the_loop
Senior Member
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2013
- Messages
- 386
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- Your Mercedes
- E220 CDI BlueEff SE, 7G auto, estate (S212), 2012
Hi All,
The 'cigarette lighter' socket in my E-class is hidden under a sliding cover in the centre console - see this picture, where the red circle roughly indicates the location:
Looks great, of course, but not very helpful if you want to keep something plugged in permanently. I guess the thinking at the Merc design department was that since the car has a satnav and phone cradle you don't need to plug in anything, but they clearly forgot about... radar detectors!
So my question-slash-general-wondering is, how to provide power for the said gadget? I suppose I could bring a permanently wired-in power cable through from somewhere, but I don't want to drill any holes in the interior panels or have any unsightly cables hanging loose anywhere, and in any case I'm not sure I would know how to do all that (and don't want to spend a fortune taking it to some car audio workshop etc.). Using the rear seat cigarette lighter for this is no good either, as it's also hidden inside the ashtray and in any case it wouldn't look very tidy to have the cable trailing across the console.
Has anyone found a neat solution to this, or otherwise have any clever suggestions they'd care to make? Any ideas welcome!
The 'cigarette lighter' socket in my E-class is hidden under a sliding cover in the centre console - see this picture, where the red circle roughly indicates the location:
Looks great, of course, but not very helpful if you want to keep something plugged in permanently. I guess the thinking at the Merc design department was that since the car has a satnav and phone cradle you don't need to plug in anything, but they clearly forgot about... radar detectors!
So my question-slash-general-wondering is, how to provide power for the said gadget? I suppose I could bring a permanently wired-in power cable through from somewhere, but I don't want to drill any holes in the interior panels or have any unsightly cables hanging loose anywhere, and in any case I'm not sure I would know how to do all that (and don't want to spend a fortune taking it to some car audio workshop etc.). Using the rear seat cigarette lighter for this is no good either, as it's also hidden inside the ashtray and in any case it wouldn't look very tidy to have the cable trailing across the console.
Has anyone found a neat solution to this, or otherwise have any clever suggestions they'd care to make? Any ideas welcome!