Car Inverter that might work with 5680 or 8890

Ask AUSSIE... this seems right up his alley.

-myrkat

Yes, it is rated about 20 watts above the 8890/5680s 120watt maximum requirement.

BTW, I've seen 400 watt inverters on eBay for about $20 or so, but otherwise it looks good!

Before you spend your hard-earned money, search these forums on this topic... while there are converters and what-not that may SOUND like they'd work, there are other variables to consider (one being the wiring/fuses in your car). It's not just volts, but amps and resistance.

Everything needs to play along. But there are options available, these have been discussed numerous times here in the forums.

-myrkat

I thought the 5680/8890 required 140 watts? And I would want some extra cushion between mu adapter's rating and the laptop's.

-phubar

Costco has the Coleman P400 inverter for about $25. I paid $50 for mine plus shipping. It puts out 400 watts continuous, 800 watts peak. Its got built in fuses and features two AC outlets (handy for those peripherals that aren't self-powered or powered by your laptop). It comes with both the butt lighter plug and a set of direct connect cables.

Before you try any of these inverters in your car, check your car's electrical system to see if its up to the task. Lighting a butt takes little power for a short period. Running an 8890 takes a lot of power over a long time. You should figure it will pull at least 12 amps off your cars electrical system, maybe as much as 15. Most car accessory wiring isn't heavy enough for that over long periods. Best is to use the spare cables to connect to a spare fuse spot on your car's fuse box and put in a 15 or 20 amp fuse. Also, make sure the inverter has plenty of fresh air, it needs cooling too.

But you also need to check your battery's capacity and perhaps upgrade to something bigger, especially if you plan on computing with the engine off (best strategy when secretly gaming in the garage late at night). And you should look at your alternator's specs to see if it can provide that extra 12 amps. Be a real drag creeping down the freeway in a heavy traffic jam with the AC on and deciding to while away the time by gaming or whatever.

Myrkat is right. If the wiring in your car or whatver your plugging into cant handle the load then no car adapter will work. This goes for inverters or straight DC-DC voltage regulation.

Well I am not sure what the AC adapter for these are rated at because I don't have a Sager. I always thought it was rated for 130Watts, and I was corrected with 120Watts. If it is 140Watts then your fine.

Just make sure that the rating is RMS or continuous power, not peak power, or you will not get a clean sine wave output and/or voltage degredation from the inverter.

The 8890 is 130 watts, the 8887 is 120W... though I've heard the 8890 may really be 120W...

No Sager is 140W now. Though, it doesn't hurt to get an inverter that is rated WELL ABOVE the 130W - for a safe margin.

-myrkat

It will work but I wouldn't run it from the cigarette lighter. It requires 20amps, IMO that should be taken straight off the battery NOT through the tiny wires that go to the cigarette lighter.

www.heartlandamerica.com has good prices on inverters also. This is the most ineffecient method for running you Sager DC 12v > AC stepped wave > Sager supply > DC to laptop.

Remember NO electronic devices are 100% efficient. So a 120Watt computer power supply still be around 80% efficient (Typical Switch-mode Power Supply Efficiency). The power that the 120 Watt computer power supply will be taking in to make the 120 watts will be around 150Watts, which is below the 140 watt max output of that inverter. If your inverter can't make that power then protection circuitry will kick in and cause problems or if your inverter is cheap it will just blow. Even if it can somehow produce that power, the voltage will likely sag which can create more problems. Notice on the specifications of cheap inverters the output voltage is rated usually from 100v- 130 VAC. I dont know about you guys, but I don't wanna be feeding my $2,500 laptop voltage that F*cked up. Again when electronic devices run at maximum output (Heat and Current) bad things are usually around the corner very soon. With Digital devices, stabile clean power is PARAMOUNT for proper operation, 100VAC-130VAC from a cheap inverter is NOT clean and stabile.

The question is will that $39 140 watt inverter work... It may or may not, but I would definitely not use it to power an expensive high-power electronics device like a sager laptop.

GO with a 300watt inverter and you'll have headroom to spare to power other devices and they cost about $50USD.

REMEMBER YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!!!!

well, I did just that. I got a power converter from best buy because I was taking a 10 hour trip to south carolina. The power converter i got was rated at 140 watts indefinitely or up to 170 watts for 5 minutes before the internal circuit burned out. I used it for close to 4 hours straight, watching dvd's and such. It was also able to charge the battery while running. I do not think it did any underpowered damage to my 8890, but who knows. BTW, i had it plugged into a lincoln continental cigarette lighter, but I dont think that is any different from other lighters. I returned the converter because it was $67 and I only needed it for that trip, but it worked fine as far as I know and it was rated at 140 watts.

Hi SPL15, one of the few members of this forum I would trust my 8890 with. A man after my own heart, backs his arguments up with detailed knowledge . And thanks for the compliments from all my loyal supporters .

First up myrkat since you have been off having your eyes reground and degreased (glad that is over huh?) I posted this about the power supplies for the 8890. (BTW there is currently some problem with the forum's direct post referencing links - it only takes you to the thread start - had to use the old method. I have emailed Ratha about the problem).

Just to clear up any confusion the 8890's are 120W.

Back to SPL15's comments, the efficiency quoted by the power adaptor manuf. is 87%. Thus 120W/0.87 = 138W which would be within the capabilities of the Linksys L03040 power inverter (some more details here). Now whilst I would worry about melting my cig lighter wires drawing out 140W (~ 12 amps @ 12V nominal) if you have a look at the device it does provide all sorts of undervoltage alarms and protection.

On the AC side the specs on the device are 114V AC +/- 5% which is 108V - 120V AC. That is well within the specs of the supplied AC power adaptor (hey it can handle up to 265V peak (check the specs again) - I should know it has to do that here in Oz). Admittedly the signal is not going to be a nice sine wave but it will keep our AC adaptor happy (see Ryan's comments).

Whilst 300W would be nice it probably is overkill. Just be aware of the possible dangers:

1. overheating the wires that connect to your cig lighter (or buy a Lincoln Continental ). Check the fuse rating of the cig lighter if you are unsure. It would need to be rated at 15A.
2. Your car battery is not designed for deep discharge. If you want to run the laptop for any lengthy period you are going to have to keep the engine running.

Otherwise it looks good. I may even buy one myself. A bit wierd for me though, as it puts out 110V AC - glad I kept my second US power lead. I knew I would have a use for it.

As to a hairy plane adaptor, I can just imagine the scene know, over the intercom comes "would the owner of a Sager 8890 please unplug their laptop, we are losing altitude..."

I doubt the Lincoln wiring is any heavier than any other car.

I run my 8890 for hours on end in my motorhome with a GPS hooked to it from a 1500 watt inverter, but the inverter is wired straight to the batteries with #2 battery cable.

My car battery is designed for deep cycles.
I have an Odyssey dry cell battery in my car. You could also get an Optima. The Odyssey and Optima Red-Top are generally used for performance applications, but the Optima Yellow-Top is preferred by people who need to discharge lots of juice with the engine off. For example, at a car stereo competition, your car would have to run the stereo at high volume for an extended period of time with the engine off.

Pulling 150 watts at 12 Volts is 12.5 Amps. The Optima Yellow is rated at 2 hours of operation at 25 Amps, so you should get about four hours of operation at half the current. That means you could run the laptop for two hours off the car battery and, as long as you didn't have any othe rmajor drain on the battery, start right up and go with no trouble. The Odyssey PC1700 will last 2.5 hours at 25 Amps, so you can get 2.5 hours out of it before draining to half charge. And those computations are for maximum drain, power conserving by turning down the screen and suchlike will get you even more time.

This doesn't alleviate the possible need to run a more robust power line from the car battery to the converter, as mentioned in other posts.

-phubar (yes, I'm also a car nut)

Edit: I'm not sure the links are working - currently no links in any posts on these forums work for me...

I didn't know they made such a beast. Good info phubar.

As to links not working, I have emailed Ratha about this - she knows about the problem. At the moment she has it on low priority but it may pay you to email her to get it bumped. In the meantime you can use a technique I posted here.

Actually, the link problem seems to have been due to a memory leak in my browser. It's been working fine since I rebooted.

I really need to reformat the HD and reinstall everything on this machine, but I'm waiting until I can transfer all my files to the 8890 I have on order.

I'm in a car club for the Dodge Stealth / Mitsubishi 3000GT. All the performance enthusiasts in the club use Optimas, I chose a Black Panther instead because it's more compact (Black Panther later became Odyssey). Dry cell batteries delever stronger, more consistent voltage to the electrical system than lead-acid batteries, which translates into 1) better performance from electrical engine components such as fuel injectors and spark plugs, and 2) better performance from the stereo and other electrical components. Only a car nut would care about the small differences, though... although for those of us who like to turn the boost up on our turbos, the spark plugs and injectors become really important.

Now I'm way off topic, so I'll shut up.

-phubar