Friday, March 11, 2011

Suppose to Work

Yesterday I thought I would check out the 1500w inverter I bought in December.  I hooked a jumper cable to the inverter and battery,then got the coffee maker to run water through it.  After starting the coffee maker I got the overload signal from the inverter.  This shouldn't happen since the coffee maker is 900w and the inverter is 1500w.  I double checked my battery voltage and yes it had plenty of power so what is wrong. So I took the inverter back to Harbor Freight to exchange in for another one. Hooked it up tried the coffee maker,same thing. So time to think and go internet searching. Ok something else to try which I should have known.  Try using a shorter length of wire to connect the inverter to the battery,bingo it works.  The first couple of times trying it the cable was to long and losing power,amps or whatever.  Now that I see it works the next project is to find a place for the inverter to sit permanently and out of the way as much as possible.  

1 comment:

Jack Winn said...

Hi,

I have the same Harbor Freight inverter... I had a similar issue when I tried using it in a temporary set up with 12 ga wires. It works best if it is connected to the battery with as short of leads as possible AND the largest gauge wire that you can connect.

Have fun
Jack
Jackw1055@yaho.com