Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

My Toyota RAV4 has several 12 volt power ports. I was thinking I could plug my Vagabond I batteries into one of them using a regular non-pure sine wave inverter or two. The idea is that I can recharge my five Vagabonds as I drive around for several hours every day. The inverters come in a number of different watt capacities. After reading the info on some of them, I'm coming to the conclusion that the bigger inverters (~700 watts) need to be connected directly to the car battery. The limitation is the wires running to the built in 12v outlets in the car, which aren't very heavy gauge. What if I bought a smaller inverter, such as 400w, plugged an outlet strip into it and then plugged all five Vagabonds into that? Idea is to top off the charge and extend battery life? What if I just ran one Vagabond I off one ~400w inverter, and switched to another one every day to rotate them? Hmm. Couldn't I do exactly that now without buying an inverter? I have several of the 12 volt charging plugs that came with Vagabond I.


Kent in SD

That 12V plug is not a charging plug (if it has the red/black pigtail) rather it is a means to run the CU150 directly from the 12V socket. If you are referring to the optional 12V to 110V adapter, then yes, you can rotate them. The charger from the V150/300 draws 1A. This means you can charge 5 from a 5A circuit. The 400W inverter should be able to perform this easily.

TS