Thread: Paintin' an inverter

My thoughts would be that if you buy a good quality inverter, as well as one with lots of headroom (ie you need 200w but you buy a 500 or whatnot) it shouldnt even get warm to the touch. And as you said, if memory serves, the powermaxx line from target looks to be power coated (where as most others apear to be annodized). Come to think of it, my American Power inverter might even be powerder coated (its been a while sinze i was digging around under the floor, out of sight out of mind ).

Yeah. The powermaxx line. Those are the ones I was looking at. How would you rate those anyway. I mean, I don't want to assume that they're crap just because they're from Target. But if there are better ones out there, I wanna know. I'm about to go do as much reading on inverters as possible. But hints and tips are appreciated.

thanks!

I used one while I was exchaning my 150w statpower for a 300w with crutchfield, and it worked quite well while I had it. It wasn't quite "winter" yet (ie coooooold) but it didnt have any problems with the weather (the statpower, on the other hand, went back, because it can't deal with the cold in my experience [subfreezing]). Heh, I tried all the easily accessible inverters on the market that I could find -while I was trying to find a good one (only major one I didnt have the chance to try was a triplite).

Breif summation of my experiences:

Powermaxx: Worked well (target)
Statpower: Finicky/Doesn't like the cold (crutchfield)
Jensen: The unit was physically (cooling fan) loud (best buy)
American Power: Before I grounded the case, introduced a fair bit of noise, but works fine now that everything is grounded (its what i ended up using) (best buy)

and completely off topic, update your cam still foo!

I had a 200Watt Tripp-Lite inverter that never got warm. Fan died, but it still ran. Even under the hood for 2 years!

I did pull it apart once. That was a good experience, I'd suggest it to anyone. It turned out that there was only one small contact to the case! It was a smallish (2 sq inch surface, if memory serves) piece of metal that butted up against the side of the case. Everything else was motherboard and I doubt that gets hot.

Perhaps a case isn't necessary. Just get it butted up against the frame of your car...

I attempted to ground my Jensen 300 watt the other day, with very little results. I couldn't find anywhere on the case or in the case that would provide any noise dampening when touched to a ground. any ideas for me? =)