I am hooking a 800 watt inverter straight to my battery. When the engine is on, my battery gets the alternator charge of 14.5 V. I think this is overloading the inverter since the red light won't go off, which means to much or too little voltage. Are there any ways i can drop the voltage down to 12v? I have tried numerous voltage regulators off old cars, tried ballast resistors off jeeps, gone to radioshack where they had a regulator but it would only do 1 watt. I have even gone to napa and autozone trying to order a voltage regulator for an old ford truck with no luck. There has gotta be some right way to do this. What is it?

 

you should be able to hook that thing straight to the battery with no problems. if you getting a power trip or overload maybe you trying to draw to much 110 voltage out of the inverter. what are you running from the inverter. also you could try plugging it into the cigirette lighter

 

thats what i figured, I should be able to hook it straight to the battery. the inverter works fine when the engine is off, but when IU turn it on, the red light comes on. this is with nothing plugged in at all. i am gonna try the cigarette lighter next. any other ideas? i think all i need is a power resitor

 

i agree with should be able to hock it up no problems. i've instaled many of these on cars trucks and other vehicles with out problems. did you buy the inviter new ? the only thing with plugin a bigger inverter into a cig lighter is that there is a higher curent that could cause the wires to melt and so on depending on usage

 

you need to hook up a relay on your positive side of your inverter so that way you do not trip the inverter to going into protection mode.