This weekend while going through my garage and deciding what to keep and what to put on another shelf for a couple years, I came across the inverter I bought for the boat a couple years back and never installed (boat has since been sold) and it got me thinking. I already have plans to run another set of batteries in the bed of the truck under the toolbox and don't really mind hooking them up in series to get 24V if I need to (inverter is the primary reason they'll be there). The issue arises when it comes to charging and what all might need to be changed, my knowledge of 24 volt systems is very limited. I've heard about series/parallel switches but don't know enough about them to wire up this BIG bastard (2500W cont/5000W surge). With the $450 price tag and the ability to pretty much run whatever the hell I want off of it, I want to use it rather than sell and buy another. Any suggestions?

 

The primary issue I see is charging the second battery in series. You can't put 12 volts to each battery to charge, and get 24 volts from the second battery. It just doesn't work that way. If you were to put a 24 volt alternator on, use it to charge the two batteries, that would work. But, drawing power for the rest of the truck off one battery will lead to issues as well. The 12 volt battery will fail far sooner than the second battery in series.

 

I've done a little bit of research regarding the switch (set to parallel for charging then changed to series to run the inverter) and have found that it puts a lot of strain on the batteries going back and forth and can cause serious damage to the electrical system if not closely monitored. I have decided to just invest in a 12 volt inverter rather than go through the hassle to make this one work.

 

Hi I have a couple of 12v inverters, one is a 1500w cont/ 1750 surge. I have a 1984 CUCV with a 24v electrical system which would work great with your 24v unit. would you be interested in doing some trading? My unit is a Motomaster, made by Trace. It has an on/off switch, bar graph LED readout for load and an LED display of supply voltage. It also has a remote on/off switch with I believe about 10' of cable. The unit has 3 outlets, two 3 prong grounded and one two prong. Let me know if this sounds like something you might be interested in!
Thanks!
Greg