At some point the PO of my 05 Z managed to break the little door that flips down to reveal the cigarette lighter on the passenger side dashboard. The door was still there, it just didn't want to flip up and stay out of the way. This would require repair so that it would look nice under the recently repaired cupholder.

Here's the hapless door, hanging there - it's bad enough that the lower dash panel is a bit scratched up, and even worse that my car is not yet sporting twin-turbos.....but this won't do. And to any of you pushing 500hp while your cig door flops around there helplessly.....you should be ashamed of yourselves. If you happen to have one and want to fix it, here's how:

The problem:



Diagnosis: The two curved arms you see in the picture below extend into the dash and interact with a spring to keep it opened or closed. The plastic arm broke on the end, leaving the spring with nothing to hook into:



Solution: Build a strap around the end of the arm to capture the spring. A sliver of aluminum sheet works nicely. These pictures show the shaping of the piece to fit:







I used three methods to secure the piece to the arm. Epoxy ladled all around it:



Some metal tape wrapped around it:



And last, a bit of wire through it to strengthen the key point where the spring end makes contact:





This last step was really necessary. The spring end goes in the small hole nearest you, while the whole door hinges on the larger one right behind it.......that's a lot of leverage being exerted on a small plastic tab.

Mounted with the spring engaged:



All done:



I'm heading back to the shop now......walking a line that keeps me on this side of "rice" and flirting with the extraordinary possibilities at hand.

 

What is this magical door of which the addict speaks?

 

I've never used that outlet, I use the one between the two seats. So I just got a piece of electrical tape and wedged it in there can't even see it

 

nice solution...prolly coulda just bought one from courtesy nissan.

 

Noooooo............I gotta save up for my turbos, man!

 

I've never noticed that door. Are those on the 03's?

 

Only some 04's and 05's......as I understand it.

 

not on 03s

 

06 has it too since I tried to take mine down for the first time today and it broke. Lol. Also, the lighter itself has no power. Maybe I wasn't the one who broke it. Either way, TY for the write up. Going to take care of this once I get back into town.

 

Great write up. I know what I will be doing tomorrow.

 

Hey guys. Sorry to bump an 8 year old thread. Just thought I'd post up my solution. In my case what broke off was the panel tab and not one of the tabs on the door like jtbinvalrico. And to make matters worse. I lost the spring. I glued the tab back on in the hopes that I would actually find the oem spring. After looking all over the internet for that damn spring with no luck. I went to Home Depot and got some plastic decorating clips ($4.98) and the screw eyes ($1.38) in the photo below. I managed to find a spring with the right amount of tension at a local hardware store. It was so small the owner didn't even charge me for it. Home Depot also has these small boxes of assorted springs for like $10 dollars. I saw them on my way to the other supplies. I checked and they had a couple of springs that also worked. All I did was insert one of the screw eyes into the door tab hole. Try to get this exact same size. If you get thicker ones you might end up splitting open or even breaking the tab. This size worked perfectly. I then attached one side of the spring to the eye and experimented with the tension so that I would know where to glue the tab. When I got to the tension I needed I glued the clip with some Loctite Super Glue I had lying around and waited for it to cure. And to finish I attached the other side of the spring to the clip. Cig lighter door working good as new. The clip and screw eye allowed for the spring to be separated from the panel. If you place the spring against the panel and it rubs. Then you get this annoying spring stretching sound. So try to avoid that. With this method you don't have to go and buy the whole panel which is pretty expensive and it's a really cheap fix. Plus if you glue the tab back on and try to put back the oem spring (if you haven't lost it like me), it has so much tension that it can break the tab back off again. Just posted this in case someone still had this problem and needed to get it fixed. It's a pretty easy fix. But if you have any questions. Let me know.Oh, and before you guys burn me. I know the panel is dirty. I had it lying in the garage for a couple of months before getting around to fixing it. I cleaned it before installing it back.