In bed outlet.

I cut a bunch of boards with a jigsaw using the bed outlet, worked fine!

 

Same here. It struggled with my Shopvac.

 

Yup. It liked my jigsaw as well.

 

It ran my hammer drill good also!

 

I wonder why shopvacs give it a hard time. Didn't realize they need so much to operate.

 

I think somethings are more sensitive to the hertz they need to run, I don't think an inverter gives you a true 60 hertz.

 

It ran a 4 1/2 inch grinder and saved me a lot of time and inconvenience for me once.

 

It depends on the Voltage and Amperage of the tool you're using.

(Voltage)*(Amps)=(Watts)

The outlet is rated for a max of 115V and 400W. Your average 6 gal shop vac requires 120V and has an 8.4 Amp draw, so you'd need a 1008W inverter.
My PC vacuum (assuming at 115v) is just over 4 amps, but that puts me at 460W, so it's still too big. Smaller power tools are usually in the 12-22V range, so at 400W, you can run just about anything between 18 and 33 Amps.

I don't know how the 60 Hertz thing plays into it, but I wouldn't discount it as a factor.

 

Vacuums also have high inrush (startup) current needs.

This is the initial current draw (captured with a clamp-on DC current probe) of a piddly little 1 gallon Stanley vacuum, rated for a 5.0 A draw:



You can see it draws 15.5 A at startup, then tapers off over the next 450 ms or so to 5.0A as the fan speeds up. The "1.5 HP" rating is pure BS. 1 HP = 746 watts it would have to draw 9 A to produce 1.5 HP.


FWIW the frequency of the in-bed AC inverter is pretty close to 60 Hz, it is however one of those cheap so-called "modified sine-wave" devices.

This (blue trace) is the output of the inverter in my '09 with no load; 121 VRMS @ 60.48 Hz (the red overlaid trace is what my power from Florida Power & Light looks like):



With a 60 W load the voltage dropped to 120 VRMS, the frequency went down a tiny bit to 60.36 Hz...

 

There is a thread on modifying the inverter to run 400w while driving. It is in the 2nd Gen area so not sure if it is the same. It is the reason I found TW, I was complaining my cooler was 350w and it never cooled during a trip. Someone told me to check here. I have been so busy finding other things here that I have never done it, might need to finish that project before my next trip.

 

Nor mine. And it's a 1.5gal

 

Used mine to cook rice last weekend.
(Asian wife priorities)

 

Oh my god dood, I am literally crying over here! Awesome post!

 

Thanks! It took that one accessory to make her happy with the truck.

 

I have a REAL inverter on my work vehicle, 2500W constant, you can run it with the engine off but you WILL draw down the battery under a good load. It costs quite a bit and has cables the size of 1/0 on the 12V side.

 

I used it with my little pancake compressor the other day to blow up inner tubes before a float down the river - it ran a little slow but it worked. Bonus: I had a crowd of bikini clad gals asking me if I could blow up their tubes for them.

 

Must be a very small compressor? I have a little fella (see below) that only draws 3.0 A running, never tried it with the Taco inverter but I will sometime--could be something useful you could do with it...

 

It's just an older version of this one.

 

Who still has an AC powered radio?

 

I carry one everywhere I go ! They are inexpensive and compact ! I never have had to jump any of my rigs . But you'd be amazed how many folks I've helped out with it .