How to rewire your tire pump to plug into your CTEK pigtail

On a recent road trip, I happened upon a stranded motorist with a flat tire. Fortunately, I remembered I had my tire inflator in the trunk and pulled it out to use for probably the first time ever. However, I realized in that moment that it would have done no good for me should I have gotten a flat. You see, the previous owner replaced my cigarette lighter socket with a USB outlet (much more useful I feel), but I was left without a way to use my tire pump.

I got to thinking and decided to replace the cigarette lighter end with the one from CTEK that I could just plug right into my pigtail that’s connected to the battery.

The job was super simple that anybody with a soldering iron can take care of.

First, admittedly because I didn’t read, the large round thing on the front is actually a can of fix-a-flat. I always thought it was part of the compressor. That’s removed easily just by untwisting it and removing the hose from it’s holder channel.

Remove the five Philips screws from the back side and carefully pull the housing apart. The rubber feet slide into each half so don’t pull them from the bottom. There’s also a sticker on the lower half that you can either attempt to peel to the parting line or razor along it.

Once open, you can see the compressor is really quite small for such a large box. There are two ends that need to be unsoldered from the unit. The positive lead going into the power switch, and the negative lead going into the motor by the cooling fan.

I purchased an extension CTEK cable to use as a donor for this project. I used the old wire as a template for the new one, cut it to size, tied my knot and placed it back into the unit soldering the ends back. Don’t forget the little rubber boot on the positive end.

I plugged it in to test and everything was working perfectly. Now I won’t be stranded and my pump is a little more personalized.
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The gauge of wire I took out of the pump was thinner that what the ctek cable was. Also, the pigtail to the battery is thicker than any wiring to the cigarette lighter. Should be good to go. Admittedly there is no fuse but lots of pumps like this come with battery clamps so I’m guessing it’s not a big deal?