What did you use your cargo bed inverter for today? (Now with Poll)

Electric espresso machines and coffee grinders?! What's wrong with you guys, are you baristas or truck drivers??

Actually, those are great ideas! I'm also taking a blender to camp with mine

 

Hmm, no idea what fridge you have, but the Dometic website says their units need 175W - and since the bed inverter only gives 100W while moving you won't be able to power the fridge while traveling.

 

or put a 3 amp dual USB and 110v plug in the back panel ..
i charge the kids phones/camara/and run the laptop 110 charger all at the same time...on one plug......

 

Hahaha all of us who camp in a truck are glamping to some degree, right? If we were real outdoorsmen wouldn't we backpack? All these comforts of home help us get out more.

I love the idea of bringing a blender on a big group trips for margaritas and daiquiris!

 

Ok, just figured out what you mean- I also thought I could use a separate 600watt inverter to accomplish it- but that still wouldn't work with the alternator being only 160watts, right? Wouldn't the extra load from the fridge drain the battery while the alternator tried to keep up? Does that mean at idilling speed, you are actually pulling extra wattage off the battery to get 400 watts?

 

The Taco brochure says that the alternator that's part of the V6 tow package is good for 130 amps - which at 14.4 (?) volts is 1872 watts. So pulling 400 watts while stationary is fine.

It sounds like a 600W alternator would be fine from that perspective. But I suspect there's a specific reason Toyota doesn't let the built in inverter run at 400W while moving, which implies that it'd be bad to run a 600W inverter while driving. I don't know Toyota's reasoning, though.

 

130 watts- you are right. Either way, sounds like the alternator will be working the whole time that the refrigerator is pulling amps from it... perhaps burning propane instead of burning more gasoline by working the alternator full-time while driving to run the refrigerator is a better idea. Thanks for the input!

 

I've heard of people throwing in an extra one or two house batteries into their trailer's system - a 70 amp hour battery could power a fridge for maybe four hours sounds like. Possibly longer if it's fully cooled and filled up with stuff. (Like, fill up any usused space with cold sodas even if you don't plan on drinking them, and even if it adds some weight.) Then once you get to camp, use a 2kW generator to recharge everything.

 

Power outage this morning at my school during my "0" period math class that starts at 6:45am. Powered a few lights and my LCD projector. It couldn't run the projector fan at full power, so every 10 minutes it would go out. Just unplugged and it reset for another 10 minutes. Power restored about 5 minutes ago.

 

I want

 

Fellow teacher here- well done!

 

This math test powered by Tacoma!

 

Be careful with that, at idle an alternator is not putting out it's max current. I have no idea what the Tacoma is rated, but if it's 130amps max, then it's not putting that out at idle.

Either way, the conversion of DC to AC back to DC is massively inefficient, so all these people charging batteries from the outlet through 110v chargers are wasting tones of power, far better off buying DC/DC converters for their equipment if possible and using the 12v DC.

 

This was a new one for the new dad... 2 month old switched over to formula as mom went back to work and won't take it unless really warm so after a long hike I started up the truck and powered up a 350W quick steamer/warmer. Hot dinner for the baby in 2 mins! haha...

 

Same here mostly to charge powertools in route to a job.

 

I threw 2 slabs of ribs in a crock pot, strapped it down, & showed up at the camp site with ready to eat ribs. Great way to start a guys trip.

 

I’ve always wanted to use the rear window to rig a small tv facing backwards and connected to a laptop so I could flash messages to the person behind me in traffic.

Maybe something like “Dude, put a shirt on” or “arming rear facing missiles” or similar.

But that’s a lot of work for the humor value.

 

Does the bed outlet have a voltage cutoff that will shut it down before the battery gets too low to start the truck?

 

Those poor kids!

 

WOW this thread came back after almost 1 year or nothing .....