Delica Canada | Mitsubishi Van Club

So I'm finaly looking at purchasing an inverter for the truck, I'm hyming and hawing about getting a true sine wave inverter or just the regular modified sine wave. I'm hoping that people running similar items to what I have will pipe up and give their experience or opinion.

Here is what I what I want to have installed - approx. a 22" screen and the ability for the kids to play their GameCube. My deck will play movies, Div-X etc and the wiring is already in for where I want the screen to be. I have the ability to play the game sounds through the deck speakers and would like the option to do so.

My concern is that the inverter will negatively effect the sound system in the vehicle - what are your thoughts? The size of inverter I need is approx. 500W with a max of 1000W but seems all are either smaller (borderline capabilities) or twice what I would need. (TV uses approx 150W while GameCube is about 80W)

Do you have your TV powered by a true sine wave inverter? If not, how is the TV and sound effected by not having a true sine wave inverter? How is your picture and sound with a true sine wave inverter? What size inverter did you go with?

Thanks Peter

If you're looking for that kind of 'purity' from your vehicle's sound system, you will probably be sorely disappointed. Firstly, the GameCube will have a switching power supply, your TV probably has one as well, and the audio deck in your vehicle will probably have one too. Unless those devices have heavily filtered/isolated power supplies (and I suspect they don't), you've already lost some of the clarity you are grasping for by asking if you should install a 'pure' sine wave or a 'modified' sine wave inverter.

The devices you listed should work fine with a modified sine wave inverter (aka square-wave inverter) of a sufficient wattage.

Unfortunately for me with my 1750 Watt modified sine wave inverter I could not use two of the more energy efficient devices that I wanted to in the Deli: an induction cooker, and a Panasonic digital electric thermo pot. Something to do with them needed the true wave to calibrate their timing cycles to. I've also read that true sine wave inverters are more energy efficient, which is one of the reasons I wanted to run those two devices in the first place.

I like to plug a kettle into it and brew a quick cup. When I first installed it I used 4 guage cable. The kettle would trip inverter warning alarm after about 2 minutes. I then installed 0 guage cable (welder's cable from Princess Auto, is much cheaper than buying it at Cambodian Tire), and the kettle now brews a full load without the alarm.

Another pet peeve. The only small microwaves that I have been able to find are the cheapies: E.G. in the $50.00 price range (maybe they are 700 watts?). The problem with these cheap ones are if you try to reheat 4 frozen dinners for 6 min each sequentially, the microwave heat sensor shuts it down on the third one and you're out of business for about 15 minutes while it cools down. I'm at the point where for longer multi day trips I'll probably just start to haul our $200.00 microwave around. I'd love to find a small (E.G. .6 cu ft) quality microwave somewhere, probably you could find one for an arm and a leg at an RV Supplier perhaps.

Last, the Xantrex inverter I have is not very good. The LCD display lasts about 6 months and then fades to nothing about the same time your warranty fades to nothing. As the Canadian Tire inverters are actually Xantrex, you can go buy another one, swap the LCD displays, and then take it back. Hell of a way to have to make them accountable for the junk they sell, but it's one way.

If I did it all again, I would definetly spend the extra money on a true sine wave inverter, however my 900 Watt Honda generator does put out a good sine wave, the bad being both those two devices I mentioned above need 1100 or more watts!

Thanks for your input :)

I would go for true sine wave as well... My cheap crappy tire 400 watt inverter is slowly ruining my laptop's power supply... I get a lot of buzzing from audio out now, even when it's plugged in at home (but clean sound when just running on batts)

I'm also running my laptop from the inverter, but that is probably a pretty dumb thing to be doing: converting DC to AC, and then converting it back to DC again. I guess you and I both should be using the Auto adapters for our laptops that the manufacturer sells for huge rip-off prices, or make something up. In my case it would be easy as it's just a standard bayonet plug.

When I bought my new laptop (Stinkpad) in June 2008, I spent the bucks for their second power supply which works on AC, 12v cig, and 12v airline plug. That eliminates much of my need for an inverter.

As for TVs, for years I've run my home CRT television, DVD player/recorder and VCRs through UPSes. None of the UPSes put out sine wave, and none of the items have complained. But I haven't got an LCD TV to answer that specific question.

Hope this helps

Now if I've got it correct, don't UPS's just generate their particular version of a sine wave only when the power goes out? Therefore unless you sat through a lot of extended power failures it's unlikely your equipment was subjected to the UPS's sine wave.

I saw a website where a guy hooked his equipment up to various UPS's and generators and compared them to mains. The expensive generators like the Hondas had cleaner output than mains power.

It varies. Cheaper UPSes just pass on AC, and change to square wave on power failure. Better ones clean up the AC, do modified sine-wave (step-wave) on failure. The really good ones are always putting out their own sine-wave from the battery, with the battery being charged all the time. Mine are mostly the mid-range ones. And since Calgary actually doesn't have many power failures, it hasn't been a tough test of the equipments' tolerance.