I believe in Insane!
Keep us posted.
I do think you should vent the battery to the outside, that baby is going
into sulfuric overload.
While you're testing you should drop a good quality (glass) thermometer
into one of cells and check your heat. An exploding battery is a
dangerous thing.

Stan Wilder
83 Westfalia Air Cooled

On Fri, 3 Aug 2001 10:47:16 -0400 Michael Townsend
<townsend@RTP.ERICSSON.SE> writes:
> Oh, I see now -- you are going to use it while the engine is running.
>  I
> was thinking you were just going to use it for camping.  You don't
> say what
> the continious current draw of the air conditioner is.  If we assume
> it is
> 4 amps and you had a 40 amp-hour marine battery, you would get 10
> hours.
> Of course, the occasional 6 amp peaks when the compressor kicks on
> and the
> inefficiencies of the inverter might reduce that some.  So even if
> you only
> get 8 hours, this isn't sounding so insane after all!
>
> If you are running it while driving, then I guess watch for
> premature
> failure of your alternator, since it has to work harder.  Where are
> you
> mounting this thing anyway?  You can't hang it from the front window
> while
> driving!
>
> Michael
>
> > I dunno about that -- peak 6 amps/690watts? on a 1300-watt
> surge/800-watt
> > continuous, 15-amp inverter?  You could be right of course; I'm
> just
> > spouting numbers from the design docs and don't know what they
> mean. My
> job
> > is to supply the Westy, beer, and band-aids. And fire
> extinguishers.
> >
> > And though I come off as a moron on purpose (because I am!), we've
> actually
> > set this up outside the van on a borrowed inverter and it works
> well (so
> > far, anyway). The a/c compressor won't need to engage very often
> (I'm not
> > planning on crossing a desert), so the charging cycle so far has
> kept the
> > battery in good shape over several hours so far. We'll run longer
> tests
> this
> > weekend.
> >
> > ~ JR

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