This is wierd... anytime you push anything into the cigarette lighter, including the cap, the interior lights dim, and then I lose my interior lights, power locks, etc. It just blows the fuse. I can't even have the cap in the lighter anymore, and I'm getting tired of buying boxes of fuses!

 

You need a new cigarette lighter. Just go to autozone and buy a new one, less than 10 bucks, Minor rewiring required. I had the same problem when I first bought my car.

 

I have that problem now. The auto stores only sells new ones with the 1 prong. Our cigarette lighters have 2 prongs. No one has it anymore unless you order from a junk yard. Still waiting for someone to respond in my previous thread in which we are in the same shoes.

 

I just had the cigarette lighter replaced as suggested by many and today during a ride the acc 20 fuse burnt out again and when trying to replace it burns out again.
Looks like there's still a short circuit going on, any idea where to look next if it's not the cigarette lighter causing the problem?
And another strange this is, why when the mechanic replaced the cigarette lighter it worked all perfectly fine. Things always seem to happen when leaving the mechanic :-)

 

pull your lower pannels off around fuse box and loosen screws that hold fuse box and lower it down. You should see a huge bundle of wires wrapped in tape. see if the fuse box mounts have rubbed a hole in any of those wires. Mine did and i was having trouble with my power windows. I had replaced everything else but ran across a thread somewhere talking about this as a defect and i had a couple burt and exposed wires. Hope it helps.

 

I know this is a really old thread, but i wanted to say thanks for the direction given on this board for troubleshooting. I recently bought a 91 RS and the 20AC fuse was blown. So out of hope it was just a blown fuse i tried replacing it only to have it immediately blow that fuse as well. So off to the internet i went searching for an answer. Thats when i found this thread, and im so glad i did. So after taking my the underside of my dash apart i began tracing wires. Found nothing to be wrong on that end so i took the took the instrument bezel off to look at the backside of the cig lighter. Turns out the two wires, power and ground had melted together. I guess the PO had pressed the lighter in at some point and for some reason it didnt pop back out? idk All i know is they were melted all the way to the point where they split in direction. So after the pain of tearing them apart and cutting them and taping them so there is no bare wire showing i plugged in a new fuse and everything started working again much to my relief. So thanks alot guys for your direction.