Anyone Add A 3rd 12V Socket In Their Ford Dash Here?

Kind of a thread hijack, but there are 115V outlets available that also have USB charging outlets. Be advised you need to have the space in the wall for the power supply part but it's another possible addition. There are also outlet "additions" that can be added.
LINK We have these at home.

Very interesting. I will keep these in mind, if not for my new situation, maybe elsewhere, even for other vehicles. Thanks for sharing Dakzuki.

ron.dittmer wrote:

Dakzuki wrote:
Good spot. You can get USB chargers that fit flush into a 12V outlet and you can get right angle USB adapters to help keep cables out of the way if that helps your cause.

OP here.

We did try a short twin USB charging adapter in both sockets, but the wires still got tangled up in the shift lever. We did not try a right angle version. Maybe such an adapter would help like you suggest, yet it will be nice to remove all such clutter for the driver.

Ron, I was thinking of the above ideas for your new outlets. I agree getting the stuff off the dash is a good idea.

Right Angle USB

Flush USB Charger

I made more progress last night. The wire harness with intermediate plug for removal works great and the half inch of harness visible looks clean. Everything is complete except the final connection to a power source. I am thinking of keeping it simple and tap into the Ford provided lower cigarette lighter socket close by. Very simple and nicely fuse-protected.

Dakzuki wrote:
Good spot. You can get USB chargers that fit flush into a 12V outlet and you can get right angle USB adapters to help keep cables out of the way if that helps your cause.

OP here.

We did try a short twin USB charging adapter in both sockets, but the wires still got tangled up in the shift lever. We did not try a right angle version. Maybe such an adapter would help like you suggest, yet it will be nice to remove all such clutter for the driver.

Good spot. You can get USB chargers that fit flush into a 12V outlet and you can get right angle USB adapters to help keep cables out of the way if that helps your cause.

Looks great! I like that spot better than the dashboard. I find the built in ones in the way as well, though the top one isn't too bad on our 2004. The other one gets little use - I didn't realize it's fuse was blown until the OBD port couldn't be read and I found out they share a fuse.

I added a 12 V Jack at the dinette off the house batteries and it is pretty handy, too.

Clean looking install.

I got my good quality 12V/USB outlet pair purchased on ebay.....


....so I started this project. I removed the 3 layers of the passenger front kick panel to access the area behind the red-circled area of the dash board.


On my 2007 rig it Will NOT Be Possible to mount an outlet there. The adjacent vent has a fairly large mounting tab there and the large finishing escutcheon plate has two metal tang snap features there. Working around the vent mounting tab alone would place even just one 12V outlet too close to an edge to look proper. And I don't want to degrade the integrity of the dash board by removing mounting snaps and tabs.

So I studied other mounting opportunities and decided to install both outlets here. I will be fabricating a clean wire harness with a plug in between the center console and dash so it can be removed. I was concerned over plug-ins being in the way of getting around inside the rig, but it should be fine. Having the outlets just above the storage bin will be very convenient to dump electronics being charged which has been most of our outlet usage.

DrewE wrote:
The motorhome will work if you don't move the shift lever at all while driving. You might not like Ford's choices of shift points, but there's no inherent reason why you frequently need to move the shift lever while driving, and hence no real safety concern from lighter plugs being a bit in the way.

Have you tried using tow/haul mode (assuming you have the five speed transmission)? It helps a good bit to make the automatic shifting somewhat less crazed squirrel like. (Tow/haul does not lock out overdrive, as some people occasionally assume. The older four-speed transmissions did have an overdrive off button instead of tow/haul mode, and that, true to its name, does lock out overdrive.)

When descending long winding roads in the mountains while towing our Jeep Liberty, I need to down-shift much sooner than the transmission will do on it's own in tow-haul mode. If I left the transmission in drive, I run the risk of being a run-away truck. The alternative would be to brake hard and often to allow the tow-haul to eventually kick into a lower gear.

It is much better on the brakes & safer over-all to slow down the vehicle in a lower gear sooner, than to brake hard to get the transmission into a lower gear on it's own later.

My experience says manually down-shifting sooner works best for our situation. So having 12V plugs and USB wires in the way of the gear shifter is a very VERY bad thing. Moving all that to the passenger side will be a good resolve.