Ok guys I was wondering if someone could tell me what I did wrong. I hooked up an 800w. 400w continuous cobra power inverter to run my laptop. I hooked it to the battery then grounded it to the bolt on the front seat. When i plug my laptop into it I get the warning beep and it cuts out. I had it came with a cig lighter plug in adapter and when I used that the red fault light would kinda "fizzle" in and out but it never beeped. I used 10 gauge wire, and an 30amp inline fuse for it. I cant believe that the laptop is to much for it. So maybe just a crappy inverter? Does my wiring sound faulty? Bad ground maybe? Any ideas would be helpful.
Thanks guys

 

Is there a wattage rating on the power pack for your laptop? 400w is not that much and the laptop might pull more than that. Did you try your cell phone charger?

I like to ground stuff like that back to the battery with another wire just like the power wire instead of finding a bolt somewhere.

 

Did the inverter come with any documentation? Troubleshooting?

 

It did come with some very basic troubleshooting. Nothing that really helps. I gonna try to ground it out somewhere else and see if that makes a diff. That is the only thing i can really think of.

 

Did you clean the ground point down to nice clean metal before sandwiching the ground wire into it?

 

Yep, I used steel wool on the bolt.

 

If you have a DMM, measure the resistance on the ground wire to a known good ground.

 

Measure the resistance between the battery's negative post and the chassis of the truck you should have 0 resistance.

800watt with 10guage wire is a little small. try 8 gauge or even 0 gauge and run every thing to your battery.

I run a 1500 watt liner amplifier for amateur radio and use -0 gauge, with three Optima battery's hooked to a isolator, and it tends to heat up after only a few minutes of transmitting.

Make sure your not cheeping out on the battery connections, a little bit of corrosion will add resistance, cutting your power down.

 

I was going to use 8 gauge but autozone didnt have any. I figured the 10 would be just fine. I took it out of the footwell and hooked it right to the battery pos and neg and it worked fine so it has to be the ground.