I had a thought, and sometimes these can be fairly dangerous, which is why I'm posting this here to get some opinions. It SEEMS fairly harmless, but I don't want to risk burning down my car.

Now, I have a cellphone. Typically, when I'm in my car, it's charging. That being said, I have the bulky charger and wire running through the car. So MY thought is... Go to the store and buy another lighter socket. Splice this into the wires running to the original lighter socket. Then, permanently plug in the charger into the new lighter, hide that behind the radio/ac/stuff, and run the wire into the center console so I can charge the phone in there. That part's simple enough, but here are my questions:

I would like to put a fuse in the line going to the charger. I would simply put an in-line fuse rated the same as the lighter fuse in the fuse panel. But, what about the fuse in the panel? Let's say, for instance, that I use the lighter and the charger at the same time with the factory rating for the fuse in the panel.. Wouldn't that blow the fuse since twice as much current is being drawn? Therefor, in my mind, I would just slap in a fuse rated twice as high as the factory rating, since I'd have two lighter sockets, and then I'd just put another in-line fuse to the original lighter socket with the factory rating. BUT... What else runs off the fuse going to the lighter? If I put in one twice as high at the fuse box, would I have to put an inline fuse in for every piece of equipment ran off that fuse?

And to possibly get around all of that... how hard is it to just run a cable off the battery line that's going into the fusebox?

 

You should be able to run it fine with the regular fuse. Even if both run at the same time it shouldn't be enough to blow that fuse.

Also keep in mind that most cell phone chargers have a fuse built into them. You can unscrew the end and the fuse inside slides out. So I wouldn't worry about your charger.

Fuses usually only really blow if there's a direct short to ground somewhere.