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Ok, i did a search, and i didnt find anything.. maybe its on here so if it is pleas point me in the right direction.


I want to install a 800watt power inverter under my passenger seat i want it permanently mounted and i dont want it going off of my cig lighter....

so my questions are:

Whats the best way to do this? wire off the battery directly?
How do i do the wiring? under the car? carpet? ideas?
basically my goal is to make it so that i can have my laptop in my car at all times...

Any ideas would be great.

 
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I'd wire it to a switched source, were it me. There are a few options I can think of that are easy to accomplish. Ground it to the bolt that secures the seat. Run the wires under the carpet where the seat bracket comes up through the carpet. That'll give you a discreet place to run the wire. From there, route it over to the center console (you'll have to extend the power wire unless it's fairly long). From there, you can go the the rear of the cig lighter plug on the switched turn-on lead, or go to the ignition in the car and wire it to the switched source there. I wouldn't straight wire it to the battery because if you turn it off it's still going to have a small draw still. Over time it'll eventually deplete the battery and kill the life of it until the car won't start one day. Switched turns it off every time the car is turned to the off position on the switch. As for mounting, you could bolt directly to the floor, or use another method that'd make it removable should you so decide one day. Silicons a piece of 1/2 MDF under the carpet. Replace carpet then screw it down into the wood, sandwiching the carpet between the invertor and the MDF. Keeps the install much cleaner as well. As for routing the power wire to your laptop, well, discreetly doing that is going to be dependant on where you decide to put it.

 
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You can also use a relay on an ignition switch like the cig lighter that activates the power directly from the battery. This way, the power comes from the battery directly, but the inverter turns on and off with the car. Put an inline fuse holder on this power wire from the battery and you're safe from any bad spikes or shorts.

Depending on what you end up running off of this inverter, you'll be a lot safer by doing this. If it's just a small laptop you will be fine running power directly from the cig lighter, but if you add anything else or if your laptop has a big screen and draws a lot of power, you may want to consider getting a relay. They are cheap, and available everywhere.

 
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my inverter (WAY smaller than 800 watt) powers my laptop, too.

first thing I did was pull out the switch to turn it on. I used a bosche relay hooked to ignition so its always on with the car on, and always off with the car off.

next was to nip off the cig lighter plug and hardwire it. theres a hole in your carpet under the seat, and with some doing, you can fish it by hand without removing the seat into the center console. from there you can run your ground to a noiseless point (empirically found) and power either up front to accessory or to the back to your aftermarket wiring.

next thing I did for my old install was to place the laptop charger under the drivers seat. I ran the first plug under the seat into the center console, and up to my inverter. for you itd be run back under the passenger seat and plugged in to the inverter.

I had all my accessories run under there. keyboard extensions, VGA outs, USB accessories with a hub under there, etc. everything ziptied nicely to keep things from getting munched by the seat.

then I ran the final outs to the computer together and wireloomed them. I tucked them under the inner seat rail out to the rear passenger area.

I then took a ziptie clip (the kind with doublesided sticky tape) and stuck it to the stationary seat rail. that allowed me to ziptie my wireloomed cable bunch (charger cable, for you) to the rail, preventing it from ever, ever getting munched by the seat.

the slack was sufficient to have the lappy on my lap, on the passengers lap, or anywhere in the back seat. and the cable was low key enough to be stepped on, tucked away, or placed anywhere.

and in your case, youll have a permanent charger in the car thats ALWAYS charging when the engine is on. perfect!

 
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well what i did for my power inverter was i bought a thing called a add a circuit and make sure u look at the fuse panel before cause it might have mini fuses. so after i bought that i took apart the cigarate plug in and took the wires apart one of them being positive the one in the middle of the plug in and the ground the one thats attached to those metal things on the side. i spliced the power into the add a circuit and grounded it. Underneath the steering collum is the fuse box i found the radio fuse and poped out that fuse and put the add a circuit in there and put 2 7.5 amp fuses in there so it would still work the radio and there would be fuse for the power commin from the car to the inverter. and thats all and it works for me.