Hi James

The cigarette lighter is conveniently close to your stereo, and certainly on my fourtrak (1990 F75 EX TD) is dead when the ignition is off. As a bonus, the wire that feeds it will be of reasonably high current handling capacity, and will also be quite highly fused to account for this. You can either cut through the wires that feed it(disconnect car battery first!!) and insert a terminal block in line with it (so you can tap in your extra wires) or if your feeling keen, try and follow the wires back to the fuse box and tap in there. Best bit of course is that if your wiring goes wrong and you end up breaking something, it's likely to just be the cigarette lighter - even for a smoker, this is not exactly the end of the world and it certainly isn't going to have any effect on the car's ability to do the basic 'getting you from A to B' thing.

Regards. Duncan