Inverter Install

[Schnitzer318is]

Now, I realize this is probably not useful to most people... but for me having it will be a huge benefit. The laptop I use for tuning my Megasquirt is an old Dell Latitude that has about a 50 minute battery life. Needless to say, it gets very annoying.

Soooo on Cyber Monday I ordered this from Newegg... Rosewill 400w inverter for $18 with free shipping. Score!!! Now, I could be a normal person and just plug it into the cigarette lighter everytime I wanted to use it. Unfortunately that is not how I roll and it has cost me many a day modding that could have been spent doing other things.



That's what it looked like before I got ahold of it. The plan is to flush mount the front panel underneath my gauges where the ashtray is. I already have a modded ashtray panel that used to hold switches and stuff so that part should be fairly easy.

The hard part, or tedious anyway, was to extend all the wiring inside the unit to give me some slack so I would be able to remote mount the inverter behind the dash. The little LED indicators were particularly fun as you have a limited solder time before they go "pop."









The other fun part was making the new trim panel for the front of the unit (my OCD kicked in again) because leaving it open would just be too easy. I cut it out of aluminum and was going to paint it... but figured I'd just wrap it in electrical tape as it would be easier and I wouldn't have to wait for the paint to dry. ;)

I got it all done though and it worked great when I tested it via the lighter plug. I am going to hardwire it to the lighter 12v+ since it was designed for using that circuit anyway. The added benefit is that it is 12v constant so I won't have to have the keys in the ignition should I want to plug something in... like a cell phone charger.

Thoughts? Comments? Ridicule?

[StereoInstaller1]

haha you are an idiot with a tiny tiny weiner and you look funny wearing a hat.

How's that?

Here, let me do it Aussie style:

You are a fucking waffleswaffleswaffleswaffles wombat-punch drop bear!

And now, Irish:

BLARGH, mate, hand me my beer!

[Schnitzer318is]

^Hah! Thanks Luke. I love you too.

"Ah see, who needs love when you can have blind hatred!"

[Schnitzer318is]

LOL didn't think this weak peak much interest. Oh well, posting it for posterity anyway.

Finished today after a frustrating day yesterday. I realized my originally desired mounting location did not have enough clearance behind it. So I had to come up with something else. I chose the passenger side footwell since it made the most sense.

Then of course I realized I would have to extend the wires further. Bring out the soldering iron and heat shrink again. Of course this time I did end up burning out one of the LED bulbs. Oh well it was just the protection one. LOL I figure if whatever we plugged in isn't working, the protection is probably on. I was still pissed.

So today I focused on routing wires and trying to find a place for the inverter's body to call home. Turns out we don't have a whole lot of extra space under or behind out dash boards. I ended up having to place it on top of the ECU behind the curve in the dashboard. Then it was just a matter of plugging everything in.

On to the pics.



This is hard for me to look at... and it was taken after I zip tied things up and out of the way. It's a nest for sure, and something I'd like to address someday, but not anytime soon since doing it right means pulling the dash. Luke try not to think ill of me. :(



This is with the glove box top trim panel and the side panel on. Much better, but it can barely contain all that wiring. The black wire and grey wire hanging down are my USB input for the head unit and the serial cable for my megasquirt. That's why they are left loose since they are wrapped up in the glove box after it goes in.



If you look at the glove box latch "striker" you can see where the inverter is tucked. It was a tight fit, but it works great.



How it looks... fairly unobtrusive.



Close up. Pretty clean the camera shine makes it look white in a couple of areas.



And a shot of my phone plugged in and charging on it. Over all I am VERY happy with the way it turned out. A tedious PITA mod to do but worth it in the end. I tested it with my laptop and my phone hooked up to it for a half hour and everything was peachy.

Let me know what you guys think... slowly I am turning this into the ultimate trip car. Next mod is custom molding a garmin GPS into the check panel area since the 318is has no check panel except the SRS which is long gone.

[StereoInstaller1]

10" Asus Android pad in the dash with an Audiocontrol Three.1 or die.

[alpinee30m50]

Damn, looks clean. I wish i could wire worth a damn

[lolcantturn]

Brilliant. I like it. I planned on doing this soon.

[AndrewBird]

Looks good. The only thing I suggest is to run a separate thicker wire from the terminal block in the engine bay for power. 400 watts is 40 amps at 12v (400 / 120 * 12), so the stock cigarette wire is not going to cut it. It will work fine for lower power devices like chargers and stuff that don't draw very much, but if you want to actually use that 400w, you might have a problem.

[Schnitzer318is]

Looks good. The only thing I suggest is to run a separate thicker wire from the terminal block in the engine bay for power. 400 watts is 40 amps at 12v (400 / 120 * 12), so the stock cigarette wire is not going to cut it. It will work fine for lower power devices like chargers and stuff that don't draw very much, but if you want to actually use that 400w, you might have a problem.

Thanks for looking out, I was aware of the limitations of wiring it the way I did though. I plan on keeping max usage at 200w or less. Not sure what I would want to use that might use more than that... of course there is always that one time. :)

Thanks for the comments guys, like I said it is a super useful mod for my particular needs. I don't think it detracts from the interior (not that I was hugely worried about that) and it is not super noisy either.