Homeless/Hobo Rigged Dual Battery Setup with Bed Power

Apologies in advance if this has already been proposed, I did some searching but wasn't able to pull anything up.

I want a dual battery setup for my truck, however the wiring and installation seems somewhat complicated/expensive. I want to move to a "legit" system eventually, but in the mean time it occurred to me that couldn't I take advantage of the power outlet in the bed to charge a second battery, and then run devices off of that?

Get a 12v battery wall charger like this:

Schumacher SE-1-12S 1.5A 6/12V Fully Automatic Battery Maintainer

https://www.amazon.com/Schumacher-S...&sr=8-1&keywords=12v+car+battery+charger+wall

And a 12V adapter/socket:

$16 NOCO GC018 15A 14AWG 12V Adapter, Heavy-Duty Cigarette Lighter Plug, and Female Socket with Eyelet Terminals

https://www.amazon.com/NOCO-GC018-A...d=1504674137&sr=8-9&keywords=12v+power+outlet

And then a cheapo car battery from Wal-Mart.

The second battery will exist purely to power an ARB fridge and USB power for a RTT - so nothing super battery draining.

This should work right?

 

If the 3rd gens are like the 2nd gens, you can only use 100 watts from the outlet while you're driving. You'd need to do the mod to get the full 400 watts at any time. I don't see why that wouldn't work though.

 

I believe I read that as well while googling around - in reality that just means the battery will charge slower right?

I would most likely be driving for most of the day anyways, so I would think that it would be able to keep up.

 

No, it means you'd likely trip some sort of breaker or blow some sort of fuse. It says it draws 1.5 amps which equals 180 watts. Quite a bit more than 100.

 

The problem i see is that you can only charge this battery from a 120vac power source, you wont be able to recharge the battery from your alternator. The fridge alone would draw an average of 1.2-2 amps. Average battery for a Tacoma is ~70 amp hours. meaning you will only get anywhere between 35-60 hours of usage. That might work for 1 or 2 day camping trip but not much more than that.

Edit:
Just reread the first post and realized you wanted to use the bed outlet to charge the battery. I guess that would work, it would be inefficient, but i guess that doesn't really matter.

 

The output is 1.5a, the power draw on the 120vac side is 0.4a (according to the printing on the side of the device in the picture).

 

I just ran my ARB fridge from a 35ah wheelchair battery for 3 days while camping. I used an 18 watt solar charger from Harbor Freight to help out. I also had it plugged into the 120 bed outlet so it ran off that while the truck was running. The wheelchair battery was $85 and is much small than an automotive battery.

 

Im running sterling piston fridgeoff a 99$ walmart maxx deep cycl e 105 ah. Also run our rtt lighting, and charge our devices. At ATR we got 72 hrs out of it b4 we left. When i went to recharge it was still 3/4 full.

 

for what you are wanting to do, I can see that working, but i would opt for a deep cycle battery rather than a normal car battery...cost nearly the same, but will last much longer on a charge