Running power from 120V inverter in back to centre console in front

I didn't do anything fancier than an extension cord with a three-outlet end, though I did try to make the remote switch blend in at the dash.

-Chap

 

I shot a bunch of stills and vid clips at the time, intending to make a little video of it, and just haven't ever gotten around to editing it down. The switch was this one, with some internal mods. It ships as a regular push-once-locks-down, push-again-pops-out switch, but the inverter I'm using expects a momentary switch (the inverter itself turns on when it sees the first momentary push, off when it sees the next one, or the power goes out). After taking the switch apart, I was able to see the little mechanism that made it a lock-on switch, and just kind of bend it until it wasn't any more.

The switch has two LEDs, the bottom one intended to light up the identifying legend (tapped into the dash illumination, I used the headlight-washer connector which is free behind my dash because I don't have headlight washers), and the top one to light when the switch is on. I had to cut the internal traces linking the top LED to the switch itself, and connect it to the remote indicator circuit from the inverter.

The inverter itself has a modular-telephone-style remote jack on the back. In the corner of this picture you can see a nice breakout board I was able to find from modular-phone to screw terminals, and that's how I got from the phone-style cable from the inverter to the bulk cable I ran up to the dash. I got the breakout thingy from Galco. Those ATM fuseholders too. ASI makes them.



A cool feature of the factory remote switch for this inverter is a feature you can enable to sense a certain 12 volt circuit and allow or inhibit the inverter turning on. I replicated that here ... the white wire you see from the breakout board to the 1 amp fuse is just the sense wire for that, so the inverter will only turn on when the VCM-06 says it can. (That's the only wire you see at the breakout screw terminals because I hadn't run the dash cable yet.)

That entailed cutting one trace on the breakout board and soldering on a resistor, which I stuck on the underside where you don't see it.

With that remote-inhibit feature, I didn't need any separate high-current relay for the inverter input. It always has 12 volts through the fat cable at the 80 amp fuse, but it shuts itself down by the remote inhibit feature when the car is off.

I know that leaves a bunch of things unspecified ... I just haven't had time to put that video together. I don't know if you've got the same inverter, or one with the same remote pinout....

Speaking of pinouts, flat phone-style cables like the one running from the inverter to my breakout board come in two styles, straight through or crossed. Obviously you can make either one work, but you'd better know which one you've got.

-Chap

 

Hmm, your inverter has a fault LED circuit too?

You could probably swap the top LED in the switch for one of those red/green bicolor jobs....

-Chap

 

NM will probably do ok, I hope, considering how frequent those hold-down clips are ... I mean, how much flexing can it get, really?

Still, car and boat makers do use stranded wire exclusively for a reason ... and another way to look at the hold-down clips is: that's how frequent Toyota made them, even knowing they were going to use stranded wire.

-Chap