No, I didn't blow a fuse, my car did. More specifically my cigarette lighter blew a fuse. I don't use it for lighting cigarettes, who actually does, I use it for powering my various gadgets. My two hours of drive time per day allow for an excellent chance to "charge" my gadgets. Course, they don't charge well when the juice stops flowing.
I don't know how long the fuse was blown, but a few days ago I noticed that the power light on my adapters weren't "lighting up" at all. At first I thought my $10 adapter was just that, a $10 adapter. But I plugged in a few others and none of them worked.
So I racked my wee little brain to try and figure out what the problem was with my power outlets. I quickly came to the conclusion that it had to be one of the fuses. The trick is figuring out which one.
Like most men I didn't bother with a manual, I just jumped right into solving this problem. I opened up the fuse panel on the inside of the car and couldn't find any of them labeled for the lighters. I then did the next best thing, I started pulling and replacing those suckers hoping I would get lucky. When that failed, I moved to the other panel but none of them seemed to be the right one either. I knew it would be a 20 or 30 amp fuse and none of them were.
I must say that in the meantime I did attempt to find the manual, but to no avail. So I started again, like the pure genius I am. Pulling the same fuses. I mean, if it didn't work the first time it might work the second time, right? I then began to hunt for the manual again and wouldn't you know it was right where it was supposed to be... I just hadn't dug deep enough. Thank God it wasn't a rattle snake.
So I read the manual and within a few minutes I had discovered that the fuse box under the hood held the answer to my mystery. I quickly located the offending fuse (diagrams are so helpful) and remembering that the fuse panel in the car had some extras I pulled one of them. Replacing the dead 20 amp fuse with a fresh 20 amp fuse the lighters lit up and I once again had power.
So after an hour of cursing under my breath and stomping around the garage and nearly blowing one of my own fuses, I fixed the problem in five minutes. Oh, Gracy was watching this whole event the entire time from the passenger seat of the car. The only thing missing for her was a bowl of popcorn. If she could talk I know what she would have said, "READ THE MANUAL." She is a "she" after all.