2024 Trailhunter Inverter

Hi,

I have the privilege of living in the greater Los Angeles area. Part of that privilege extends to just having lived through a 48 hour power outage due to wind and wild fire risk.

By the way we came off unscathed and our greatest anxiety was the food in refrigerator spoiling. As some of you might know, there are much greater travesties going on in the surrounding area.

Yesterday after work, we plugged the refrigerator into the inverter but since that requires the car to be running, my wife did not feel comfortable to leave it unattended. I assume we could lock it but breaking the window would yield quick access and off it would go.

By the way, this is already the 2nd time we've had a power outage that lasted more than 24 hours recently.

So, my question on this forum is if anyone knows of a video or the like where "somebody" shows how they successfully run the car, possibly overnight, and had a good nights sleep?

I would think that in the current environment this might be a selling point for Toyota. We have multiple neighbors (by luck not adjacent) running generators non-stop. These create tremendous air and noise pollution. The Tacoma runs much quieter, turns itself off when the power draw is below threshold and can I hope is less polluting when it does run!

We are expecting more wind starting Monday.

M

 

My use case has been in the wilderness sleeping over the top of the truck in a roof top tent with a firearm under my pillow. I think you wouldn't want to drag your refrigerator out there.

My suggestion is to put the truck on jackstands and remove one or more wheels.

 

We went to harbor freight and bought one of the little predator generators last time we had power outage. We got the 2000 watt unit to run our fridge. They run very quiet. Thats my suggestion. I would not recommend running your truck unattended.

 

Portable generator, house generator(generac), Tesla power wall, or Ford Lightning. Those are your best options if you are prone to blackouts.

 

Buy a portable generator. Worth the price especially if you need it for remote projects/camping/etc...

 

A halfway decent portable generator would be way more practical. Or just buy a few ice chests and some bags of ice. But if you want to run the truck all that time just put a $30 steering wheel lock on it.

 

Get a generator we had no power for 8 days it was a lot of gas. If i were to buy another i would get a propane one they are impressively quiet .

 

You already got good advice above about generators.

I know this sounds dumb and isn't really possible. Changing your lifestyle to be less electricity dependent. I know it's not possible when you have a refrigerator, cell phone, or EV which having an EV that acts as a power supply would be a benefit. The reality is you have to limit your electricity consumption when using an alternate power source and power outages no matter the cause become more frequent. The less need you have for electricity, the less impact an outage will have on your lifestyle.

 

Would the inverter even run the fridge?

Consider how much it would cost to totally restock your fridge. Then decide if it's worth trying to keep it running with a generator cost, maintenance and fuel. If you could get it.

I have a large Anker cooler which will run in freezer mode for 21 hours on one battery. I have 3 batteries and a solar panel, and they can also recharge from a car battery. Living in hurricane land, 48 hours is a hiccup.

 

Hi,

really appreciate the responses and it helped me come up with a solution going forward, which I'll share here. Realize this is my solution and by no means perfect.

Some of you suggested a generator. Even the 2000W generator costs $600 from Harbor Freight. It claims to be quiet; I've no way of knowing until I get it home how quiet it is. As consumers we think that we should just get more and more stuff and in this new normal getting a generator makes perfect sense, but until 2 months ago I've been able to live completely normally without one. So getting a generator seems in this moment an overreaction. It would take a lot of shut downs to use $600 worth of gas, and at idling speed the wear and tear on the car I hope is minimal.

Incapacitating the car would also work but since my wife needs a vehicle to get to work, means I'd have to "fix" that every morning.

So my solution for now will be to park my vehicle next to the house where I have enough space to park an RV. I have a gate there that I can lock, but made of plastic, so the TH can easily breach that. However, even though, I could incapacitate the vehicle by removing a wheel or getting a wheel lock, I can park my other car in front of the gate. My TH is quite capable but driving over my other car is not one of them.

We've just been notified that we will get another power outage today and so this "plan" might go into effect soon. Hopefully it will tell me the flaws in thinking very quickly.

 

Post 9, line one

Suggest proving that via testing first.

 

$600 is what i paid last year for my generator. Buy once, cry once. No way i would leave my new TH running unattended overnight just to save a few hundred worth of food.

 

I have a Predator 4550 watt Inverter generator from harbor freight. Cost me about $679, I bought during hurricane Helene which we lost power for 3 days.
It holds just over 3.5 gallons of gas and runs for 16 hours on a tank. During the storm I ran drop cords to what I needed to run.
Since I have added a generator lock out switch to my panel box. And had a plug added to the side of my house where I just plug the generator strait into my house.
2 separate evenings I have shut off my main breaker and plugged in the generator. My generator is only 110-120v so I can only run the 110-120 appliances at my house.
With the generator plugged in and running, I turn on the 110-120 breakers one at a time till they are all on. I did this both evenings for about 4 hours till after dark.
Both evenings I had heat and hot water, gas furnace and tankless gas water heater. I ran 2 refrigerators and all lights, including outside landscape lights. My whole house has LED lighting. I ran my 65in TV with satellite and internet. I made a simple dinner of hotdogs or hamburgers and french-fries. The burgers and dogs and cooked on my pellet smoker with requires electricity. And the fries I air fried in my toaster oven/air fryer.
The only things I could not run was my dryer, central AC and kitchen range.
As far as how the generator performed, I turned on everything like a normal evening.
And other than the low hum of the generator running in the background, I couldn't tell any difference than if the power had been on.

As a side note, I could go get a larger generator to run 220v and run those other items. But it would probably burn twice the gas.
With this one doing everything I really need, I'll just save the money and get the extended run times on the gas.

 

So the new TH comes with a 2400W inverter. No longer a 400W inverter. I have tried it successfully. It lowered the fridge temp to 37F within the hour.

The issue with restarting a fridge that has sat unpowered for 48 hours is that inside temp and therefore everything else in it is at about 50F. The inside temp can quickly be lowered, but the stuff radiates heat for quite some time and after turning the fridge back off, the inside temp will rise again until dumped to the outside.

The nice thing on the TH is that when there is no power draw, the TH turns the motor off to conserve fuel; this is unlike a normal generator that runs non-stop. So technically should cycle along with the fridge until the temp is stable.

As should be clear by now, I'm a glutten for punishment. I actually like to go without the normal comforts for a short while, as long as the food in the fridge does not spoil I'm ok. Reminds me of when I had less and when I was just as happy.