JackGSonic
New member
I've seen plenty of people that add Cigarette Lighter ports for additional accessory power near the dash. Such a system for me seems to be excessive. Wiring up a Cig port to connect a power adapter to, to connect your device to. For my mod I cut out the middle man and installed two 12V to 5V buck converters. There are plenty of dash teardown walkthroughs here so I will just focus on the details of my install.
There are a lot of options out there for buck converters, they all rate at 3A max output. I went with two one-port models so that each of the two phones (Nexus 5 and iPhone4) I typically have on my dash have all the power they need without maxing out the converter.
I used an Add-A-Circuit to split off the Cigarette Lighter fuse on the fuse panel for a switched circuit. A 5V3A max power draw would be 12V1.25A on the car side. Having two converters on one circuit, I fused them at 3A. Running smooth and strong so far!
Installing the USB ports at the dash was quick and simple. Pop open the center console, take out the left cubby, cut a small hole to push the USB ports through (The cubby plastic is a LOT softer than I would have expected), and secured to the side of the cubby using Sugru. Everything reinstalled and the ports are right behind my ProClip phone mount.
The only issue I had was the power was not immediately recognized by the iPhone. I was able to fix this using a fastcharge adapter that forces the device to recognize a USB source as fast charge capable. The Nexus worked no problem.
There are a lot of options out there for buck converters, they all rate at 3A max output. I went with two one-port models so that each of the two phones (Nexus 5 and iPhone4) I typically have on my dash have all the power they need without maxing out the converter.
I used an Add-A-Circuit to split off the Cigarette Lighter fuse on the fuse panel for a switched circuit. A 5V3A max power draw would be 12V1.25A on the car side. Having two converters on one circuit, I fused them at 3A. Running smooth and strong so far!
Installing the USB ports at the dash was quick and simple. Pop open the center console, take out the left cubby, cut a small hole to push the USB ports through (The cubby plastic is a LOT softer than I would have expected), and secured to the side of the cubby using Sugru. Everything reinstalled and the ports are right behind my ProClip phone mount.
The only issue I had was the power was not immediately recognized by the iPhone. I was able to fix this using a fastcharge adapter that forces the device to recognize a USB source as fast charge capable. The Nexus worked no problem.
