Today I bought a universal cigarette lighter to replace my non working OEM one. The one I bought was very similar to the OEM one. Only significant difference is the lightbulb for the orange ring has only one wire instead of two. To remedy that I took suitcase splicers and ran the red and black wire to the black wire from my new lighters lightbulb. Anyway I got it all wired up and went to test and viola.. it doesn't work. But not only does it not work, now my climate control lights and insrument cluster needles have stopped working. My cluster gauges still have the backlight. Idk if its because I have an aftermarket thing on my gauge faces to change color and have their own dimmer or what. The only thing I can think is my problem is that the black wire to the lightbulb may have been a ground somehow tied in with the climate lights and whatnot. Nothing came loose that I know of when I was doing this, and I haven't checked the fuse yet because I don't have a diagram for which fuse is which and I was too frustrated too through and check each fuse. Anyway.. somebody help me lol. Electrical is my worst nightmare.

 

 

Wiring to my new lighter^

 

I would take the new lighter out and put it back the way it was to ensure everything works. Then wire it without the orange light. Once it works that way, wire the orange light in.

 

Did you just run 12v through your ground? Put it back to stock and check your fuses.

 

You need a trouble light or an ohm-voltmeter.

Disconnect what you've done. It sounds like you fried a fuse so find it and replace it.
Once everything that used to work now works, take the multimeter with the black wire on a good ground and the positive on either of the two wires going to the cig lighter. Set the multimeter for low volts like 100 volts scale. The positive will be the one that has 12 volts from the positive of the MM and the black wire on a ground. Then, set the MM for ohms and again, set it at a low setting. Leave the key off because some MM's don't like voltage on the ohms section. Now, take the red wire and attach it to the wire you thought was ground leaving the black wire on a definite ground. If you chose correctly, the ohms reading should almost be zero. If not, you might have a bad ground or even a switched positive wire.

Once you find the correct ground, hook it up to the outside of the cig lighter and the positive to the center terminal of the cig lighter. With nothing hooked up to it, everything should work. Once you verify that, try a lighter or a cell charger. You should be OK but you need to ensure you have the correct positive wire because a cig lighter is essentially a short so it takes a decent wire to power it.
Good luck and keep us posted.

Stop smoking while you're at it /s

 

Alright. First thanks to everyone for the input. Second... I'm still in the same boat. I returned everything basically to stock. Since I pretty much destroyed the old components (sometimes I become the hulk) I got a new bulb and wired it the right way. Still nothing. I know it's not stock but it's close enough. I checked all of my fuses, and traced the wires as far as I could. Everything seems right. The only thing I can think of, which I didn't remember I did until I put everything back together, was wrap the washer between the element and casing in electrical tape. Would that really make a difference though? I'm gonna be pissed if that was the problem all along.

 

Doesn’t it get the ground from the case? It’s been a while since I looked at mine. Try taking the tape off the washer.

 

So I tried everything suggested, still no good results. I have one other thing to check but I'm just not tryng to take the cluster out. Any other ideas other than that it came undone from the back of the cluster?

 

Don't forget it uses a pull up from positive. Ie always positive, ground is switched. You are prob running + 12v to ground

 

1st gen cig lighters are currently on eBay; why not just cut to the chase and buy one there?

 

Alright, here's what I did for anyone that comes across anybody else this weetuhded. After months of having only half working gauges and dark climate control at nights i finally put some serious thought into my electrical problem instead of having a mini anxiety just thinking about it. Anyway! When I attempted to replace my oem cigarette lighter with a universal I crossed wires and blew my dimmer switch out. Easy as that. I tried everything. I got a "new" oem cigarette lighter thinking that would help like everybody said too, but no bueno. However after I installed it and it was working I knew that the lighter wasn't the problem. I had a s13 once that had a similar problem, and I remembered that when I replaced the dimmer it fixed it, so I went to the parts yard and luckily the one fb (an SE at that) had the dimmer. Morale of the story, it was the obvious answer and I can't believe I didn't think of it earlier. Case closed, thanks for everyone's help.

 

Did it btw. Now my cigarette lighter serves as power to my new radar detector.