Hard wired power inverters

AZJeepster242

AZJeepster242

Adventurist
Hey all. Was curious to know if anyone had any ideas, recommendations or experiences for hard-wiring an power inverter into your vehicle? I am looking for something that would not tie up a cigarette lighter that I'd be able to plug in an iPad and a Garmin Glo to use for back-roads navigation. any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
PLEASE do not run an inverter for that purpose. Instead install the new Blue Sea high amp USB power port. BOTH of those devices work with this.

Inverters are the most inefficient 12 volt device you can put into a vehicle.

You can find the new Blue Sea port at Amazon
 
Anything special I need to know about mounting this? Any tips/tricks/suggestions? Anything else I should wire in with this?
 
It depends on where you draw the power from.

If it were me...

I would figure out where I'm going to drill the 1-1/8" Hole to mount the port, measure from that spot to the vehicles battery and come up with a rough idea of how much wire I'm going to need. Go to powerwerx.com, they have 12 gauge "zip line" which is a power and ground in one, and run that through the firewall and into the mounting location and put on the female spade connectors, mount the port and plug the wires on. Back out at the battery, I would put a 10Amp inline fuse on the positive wire and hook it up to the positive side of the battery, the negative side I'd either ground at the body where the battery does as well, or just put it on the battery itself.

The port should be live now, test, and enjoy!
 
The rubber grommet....the JK has holes to pass wiring through in the firewall doesn't it? Its got a flexible rubber wall you can feed ires through if I recall from when I installed my sPOD.
 
Cool. now to just figure out a spot to mount this in the area of the glove box that makes it easy to get at & keep the cables out of the way of the passenger when in use.
 
WUZombies said:
Let's say the inverter would be for other purposes than USB charging, what are the group suggestions?
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Bigger wire than what is specified and make sure it is fused and as always, the fuse should be the weakest link in the system
 
WUZombies said:
Sure, but what inverter?
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Depends on the other purposes. I don't have a brand suggestion, but if you're going to power sensitive electronics like laptops, tablets, cameras, etc or high amp draw devices like microwaves, tools or A/C units then spring for a true sine wave inverter vs a modified sine wave unit. They're more efficient and the devices powered by it will operate better without circuit degradation.
 
I've been running a Samlex Pure Sine Wave inverter for the past 2 1/2 yrs in the Airstream, with no problems. You also don't actually need bigger wire than what's recommended unless you're running a long distance. Proper wire sizing will serve you, otherwise, you're just wasting money. Buy good wire, class K. On inverters I prefer ANL fuse block connected to the battery. https://www.bluesea.com/products/5005/ANL_Fuse_Block_with_Insulating_Cover_-_35_to_300A

DC_wire_selection_chartlg.jpg
 
Gallowbraid said:
Depends on the other purposes. I don't have a brand suggestion, but if you're going to power sensitive electronics like laptops, tablets, cameras, etc or high amp draw devices like microwaves, tools or A/C units then spring for a true sine wave inverter vs a modified sine wave unit. They're more efficient and the devices powered by it will operate better without circuit degradation.
Click to expand...

Mostly for electronics and mostly for laptops in that regard. The rest of my current electronics gear I've made adaptations or provisions to use DC power (either hard wired usb power ports or 12v accessory connections for other things like charging handheld radios and camera batteries). I looked at wiring in a DC transformer to direct plug a laptop into and realized it would be a huge pain in the ass due to different laptops requiring different power configurations (as far as I can tell).

I'll dig around for true sine wave inverter reviews on the interwebs, thank you for pointing me in a direction to get started.
 
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