After I got my license as a teenager my first vehicle was an old Ford cargo van. I installed a 1200W inverter and an extra battery, through a low voltage disconnect to avoid accidentally draining the main car battery. Designed a bracket for it, carefully cut out all the metal bits with a cutoff disc on a cheap tablesaw, took it to a local autoshop and begged them to spot weld it together for me. Got home and realized it was assembled backwards (d'oh!). More work with the tablesaw and some bolts. Went a little overkill on wire gauge the size of my thumb to connect it all (it was fun to fish that under the rockers).
It worked great - I could easily run handtools like hammer drills (this was before they came with batteries) and even managed to power that tablesaw. Toward the end of highschool we built a bunch of theatre sets in the parking lot running off it.
Girls got a kick out of making hot chocolate while we were out in the country stargazing, and loved being able to plug in a hairdryer.
As the van got older and crankier, it was handy being able to flip on the second battery to give it some extra starting juice on cold winter mornings (-35°C).
I did wear out an alternator prematurely but the replacement one lasted the remaining life of the vehicle.
I wasn't planning to buy a new truck but this feature could actually draw me in.
After I got my license as a teenager my first vehicle was an old Ford cargo van. I installed a 1200W inverter and an extra battery, through a low voltage disconnect to avoid accidentally draining the main car battery. Designed a bracket for it, carefully cut out all the metal bits with a cutoff disc on a cheap tablesaw, took it to a local autoshop and begged them to spot weld it together for me. Got home and realized it was assembled backwards (d'oh!). More work with the tablesaw and some bolts. Went a little overkill on wire gauge the size of my thumb to connect it all (it was fun to fish that under the rockers).
It worked great - I could easily run handtools like hammer drills (this was before they came with batteries) and even managed to power that tablesaw. Toward the end of highschool we built a bunch of theatre sets in the parking lot running off it.
Girls got a kick out of making hot chocolate while we were out in the country stargazing, and loved being able to plug in a hairdryer.
As the van got older and crankier, it was handy being able to flip on the second battery to give it some extra starting juice on cold winter mornings (-35°C).
I did wear out an alternator prematurely but the replacement one lasted the remaining life of the vehicle.
I wasn't planning to buy a new truck but this feature could actually draw me in.