I touched a broken cell phone charger in and on the cig lighter, which instantly made my a/c lose all power to dash unit. No display and no anything? Pulled some fuse under hood for reset, didn't work. Where is the fuse box? Driver side? Which one? And is this standard to short unit when something touches the metal in cig lighter. Happened before when a dime fell into the lighter area. But had mechanic do it then. Want to do it myself if possible. Help.

 

It is possible that either the built-in fuse on the cigarette lighter went out (it's merely a washer that can be removed carefully before reassembling the lighter unit) or the cigarette lighter fuse was tripped and blew. I don't recall offhand which location this one is located in but the two fuse locations are under the hood in a black box on the driver's side of the engine bay that you open with a phillips head screwdriver (the screws stay captive in the lid of the fuse box when you pull it off) or else that fuse is located in the driver's side footwell on the left side just above where the carpet ends. There is a small lid there as well that you open with its little plastic catch release.

Replace that fuse first after verifying that it has been burned out. If that doesn't restore all functions AND your DC power plug (aka cigarette lighter power) then you'd want to remove the upper console surround trim, go to the underside so that you can remove the ashtray/lighter section and then perform this fix to it.

However I don't recommend bothering to do this step UNTIL you have verified that a simple fuse replacement has solved your issue first. This is a last resort step to replacing the lighter part with a new one, a good working one or by repairing the tiny load protection circuit shown in the video.

The only downside to not replacing the insulating washer "fusible link" style sub-circuit within that lighter is that load protection BEFORE the main cigarette lighter fuse circuit is no longer there. You still have the main fuse on that circuit at the fuse box under the driver's side footwell (pretty sure that's where you will find it).

This is only going to be an issue if you plan to run any heavy load devices through the DC port (such as power inverters or maybe even a high current draw tire pump). USB charging and current draw from other similar small electronics are not going to stress the circuit enough to matter. However, since this fix would represent a change from how Toyota designed it originally just keep this in mind if you do need to do it.

Replace the fuse first. Chances are that is going to solve your issue without getting into this last resort fix.

 

Here is the breakdown of fuses inside the SC300/400 driver's side footwell kick-panel: