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An addendum to the last post. When I went to test the Bolse charger in flight, I noticed that it kept popping the breaker. The below photos are the "before" of the inside of the lighter socket.
Here's the bottom of the socket.
The outer barrel is connected to
ground. The center stud at the back is connected to positive voltage
through a breaker. There's a tang also connected to positive voltage
that sticks out toward the camera that's also at positive voltage.
Notice on this side (which is lower right in the
socket as it sits in the plane) there's a nice cutout in the barrel
for the tang to make sure they don't touch.
Now here's two other shots of the other side of the lighter socket.
Note that there are TWO cutouts, but the other tang lands directly in
between them. In other words, if the tang gets pushed out from the
center, it touches the side of the barrel. As you can see, it's done
so quite a bit; the edge of the tang is eroded.
What it looks like to me here is that the barrel and the pieces that sits in the back of the barrel don't match. I presume there's a three-tang pattern and a two-tang pattern, and someone later replaced the back part of the barrel with the wrong piece. Since it causes shorts, I almost wonder if it wasn't a former owner doing some "hangar fairy" maintenance. Also mildly amusing that no one since then noticed it.