Question about installing Inverter

No he is not correct. We are obviously talking about the 12 volt side of the inverter! Put down the keyboard and slowly back away!

 

20 amp fuse.... bet someone spends a lot of time talking to customer support.

 

Anyone of them devices would work. The first one looks like it has a removable sleeve for the 1/0 wire. The whole idea of the exact size hole is to keep your stranded wire from bird caging. You can remedy that with a little flux and solder on the wire end or you could use the one that requires lugs and solder them on for a professional job.

Cut your excess wire length off to prevent the voltage drop. The shorter the better but leave yourself some working slack.

As far as a 4000 watt surge you'll never see it inside a truck. Surges are to start motors and compressors. You won't be able to use above a 1000 watt microwave because of the surge. The only other things you might use is a hotplate or coffee maker. Just don't use none of them three at the same time. All the other stuff like a fridge, TV, laptop have very little draw. My dorm fridge took 150 watts to start and cruised on 70 watts to give you an idea.

Yes ground the unit to the truck chassis. Hanging on the cupboard is an insulator. Without the grounding there is a slim chance the unit could short to the inverter housing. If that happened the inverter housing would shock you. With it grounded it would blow the little fuse on the inverter like it's suppose to.

You always want to go one step higher. The inverter won't let him draw above the 166.7 amps whatever it is. It will allow him to draw 160 amps. You don't want to blow fuses unnecessarily. He's protecting only the cables from shorting to ground. If they short it'll be a lot higher than 200 amps. More like 500 amps and the fuse would blow in a millisecond. It wouldn't have a chance to do any damage.

Yes you have a 20 amp on the back of the inverter. That only protects from the inverter on. It doesn't protect the battery cables. Most of these truck fires you see are from the battery cables shorting at that hole in the floor from repeated vibration rubbing the insulation off the hot wire (shoddy installation). To protect the cables they come out with these inline fuses oh maybe 7-8 years ago.

So you actually have three levels of protection then, the inline fuse, the inverter fuse and the the inverter's internal thermal overload. They each have their job. You're only half protected.

 

The likely hood of him ever going above 150 amp is remote, if it happens that will tell him he's drawing very close to the limit or something it very wrong. But either way will work. A blown fuse, no big deal, melted wiring, well...................

 

I used the fuse type that Condo had a picture of with 0/ wiring with no problem. I ordered 2 - 6ft and a one foot length for the fuse.

 

i have a road pro 1500watt and a 1050 watt microwave, turn the microwave on and it runs for about 2 seconds and inverter shuts off. why? I bought it off ebay and the power cables that I found are aluminum I think (for stereo amp) dnt know much about these inverters. also I have a 07 freightliner w extended frame and battery box is close to front tandems. any help would be greatly appreciated

 

Very well could be the wire is wrong type/size. Does the inverter run others things OK? What gauge/color/length is the wire?