Delica Canada | Mitsubishi Van Club

THe 600W was a Black and Decker from Wal Mart for about $75.00 or so. The 1750 Watt is from Can Tire and was $300.00. I like the fact the latter has a voltage readout. WIth the larger unit and the JDM batteries that came with the van, if I used a hot plate or microwave I found the low voltage alarm would come on after a couple of minutes, so I replaced the batteries with yellow top spiral cells.

The downside to these it they are square wave inverters. I wanted to run an induction cooker and panasonic water heater as they are way more efficient than a hot plate and kettle, but as they have sophisticated timer mechanisms that need sine waves they wouldn't work.

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Thats a drag, I was hoping to use the lighter and not have to run wires under the seat. So a 300w inverter would be fine if I have it wired properly?

I use a 200w inverter and it runs my 135w laptop no problem. I connected a 30 amp fuse to the battery, ran 12 gauge wire and soldered it to the lighter socket. The extra advantage is now I don't need to have the key turned on to run it. There is a possibility of running the battery too low to start the car so I carry one of those portable booster batteries as well.

I use a 300w canadian tire inverter on my rear cigarette lighter socket to run a laptop. It needs lots of charge in the battery to run without beeping with the engine off, but with engine on it works fine. My old laptop had problems charging and running at the same time (keeping it off until it was full, then running it was fine) but I got a very small one (Sony PCG-SR5K) with a dead battery, so it's working good enough right now, but it would work better wired right to the battery but I like to put a second battery in as an accessory battery because if you drain it until it beeps on a direct connect you really drained it at the battery to 10.5v, instead of at the cig. lighter (still 11+ v at battery), so it won't start... Also it works like garbage if the socket is not inserted properly and if the socket has corrosion it'll get crap for current too.

You can sort of see the inverter sitting in the pocket by the rear climate controls near the seat in this shot:

Schwa, in your pic I noticed that your curtains have disconnected from the rail in exactly the same place that my mine constantly do. It makes me think this must be a weak point in all the Delica's. DO yours keep coming off there even if you re-attach them?

JMK wrote:Be sure to choose your wire guage carefully. Here is an example of what the wire that goes to my inverter looks like (the grey one):

I couldn't agree more!

Getting the correct gauge of wire is vital and remember, the longer the distance between battery and inverter, the thicker the wire needs to be.

Give an electrician the distance from battery to inverter, power consumption of the inverter etc....and they be able to tell you what wire to use for the job....and make sure you put in a suitable fuse right at the battery end too. This part is VITAL!!

Here is a shot during my inverter/mains hook-up/charging system install. The two black wires on the left are the 12V feed from the battery to the unit. I took both live and earth direct off the battery for maximum supply (rather than earthing to the vehicle body) This gives you some idea of what cable you'll be needing - and mine is only an 800W inverter.

Here's the system that I ended up with:

Using dual purpose deep cycle Spiral Cell Batteries:


How to hook up a large slow blow fuse:


TO feed a 1750W Inverter mounted behind seat (the Voltage readout is handy and be seen from the drivers seat):


With a power bar behind it that takes an AC feed direct from an external power source such as land line or generator:


Also with an external BNX connection that feeds DC charging current directly to the batteries from the generator. The other plug is for the power bar, and another you can't see for the recirculating heater.