Dodge Durango Forum II

A few MORE words of wisdom...

If you're plugging in a cooler, laptop, cellphone, etc and an inverter, you could very well go over the 20A rating of your aux jack. A 140 Watt inverter running at 120 watts draws about 20 amps by itself. I have two inverters in my "D". The one (RadioShack brand) that is dedicated to my laptop (the one with the standard A/C plug that will fit into any inverter in the world) draws about.1 amps at idle (no load) and about 2 amps when my laptop is attached to it. If I hook a 100 watt work light to it, the current draw hops up to about 17 amps. For this reason, I ran a 10 gauge wire directly to the PDC for the inverters and fused this line separately so that the aux outlet would not be affected since I'd hate to be without my laptop, cell phone or cooler if I were to get stuck somewhere and had to "max" the inverter causing the aux fuse to blow. The "built in" fuse on the 140 watt inverter is 30A! So, obviously, taking the inverter anywhere near it's capacity will overload the Aux jack, it's wiring, and the fuse before the fuse in the inverter blows. This, especially if you have a few other 1 amp apiece devices plugged in at the same time. But, if you are only going to power small wattage A/C devices from the inverter and won't ever approach it's capacity, there should be no need to isolated it on it's own circuit.

Also as noted below, if you are just wanting to run a laptop, an option is to change the 12VDC to whatever the laptop needs. Problem with a lot of laptops nowadays is that they need more than 12VDC! Many are 16 volts, and I've even seen some %40 24. There are universal laptop adapters available though that will handle any of the voltages via a dial setting. I have one to use my laptop in other vehicles that has settings from 6VDC to 24VDC. If you go for a "universal adapter", make sure it has enough current handling capacity for your laptop. Those little buggers are very amp-hungry, so the universal type adapter that one would use on a CD player or walkman will not cut the mustard.

I read into your message though that you want to power other things with your inverter, so that may be the best route for you!

[This message was edited on Thu Nov 30 at 11:03pm by the author]

Thu Nov 30