How do I wire in a cigarette lighter?

[DaveVA78Chieftain]

Your sort of taking things out of context do to poor formatting of the material you are reading.

Equipment limited to operation from 12 volt battery power onlyâ€"including 12 volt TVs, radios, stereos, unfiltered fluorescent lightsâ€"must be connected to the fused battery circuits of DC DISTRIBUTION PANEL or RV battery line.

Meaning - If the operators manual of the external 12VDC device says it can only be powered from a battery, then you cannot power it from the converter.  That would be a rare occurance for modern day electronic devices.  Was mainly an issue back inthe 80's.

DO NOT connect equipment requiring more than 3 amps to terminal “B”.

Internal wiring connection.  The "B" terminal is the charger section output that connects directly to the battery.

AUTOMATIC-RESET THERMAL BREAKER
A protective Thermal Breaker will “break” the 120 VAC power to POWER CONVERTER Section of Power Center if POWER CONVERTER becomes overheatedâ€"by operation above its maximum limit for an extended period of time or obstruction of ventilation to unit.
POWER CONVERTER Section will instantly switch 12-volt light and motors to battery.
In either case, the Thermal Breaker will reset itself after a period of time, and the lights and motors will again resume operation from POWER CONVERTER Sectionâ€"only to shortly again “break”. When this occurs, take immediate steps to correct cause of overheating. A portion of RV 12-volt loadâ€"lights or motors or bothâ€"should be turned off to reduce total load. Also, inspect POWER CONVERTER Section to make certain ventilation is not obstructed.

Makes more sense when read this way.

Will address wire routing on next post.

Dave

[DaveVA78Chieftain]

12VDC fuse panel is at top right.  Each fuse feeds a seperate circuit via the associated wire below the fuse.  If you have a spare fuse, then connect a new wire to the connector below it and route it to the B+ terminal of your cigereete lighter.

If no spare fuse, then you will have to use a seperate fuse holder (from auto supply) and either connect it to the big red wire (top right of DC fuse board) or connect it directly to your B+ terminal on your battery.

Fuse size - If your inverter is 300 Watt then you will need a 30 amp fuse.  A 150 Watt inverter will use a 20 amp fuse.

Wire size - 30 amp fuse should be 10 or 12 guage for safety.  20 amp fuse should use 12 or 14 gauge wire.  Use the smaller gauge for a 10ft run.  Use the larger gauge for 10 - 15ft run.

Dave

[moonlitcoyote]

The reason I believe that is has to be powered by battery only is because the red light on the inverter I plug in only comes on when I am hooked to shore power, and the manual for the inverter says that if the red and green light are both on then the voltage is too high.

[DaveVA78Chieftain]

For reference:
From what I read about the Magnetek 6345, there are 6 "unfiltered" and 3 "filtered" circuits on the DC distrinbution panel.  In this context, "filtered" means the connection is always from the battery when on shore power or not.  The "unfiltered" circuits would be from the battery (therfore filtered) when disconnected from shore power and from the converter when connected to shore power (unfiltered).  While I do not have a clear picture of the lable on the back of the drop down door, I believe it says the 3 fuses on the right side are filtered so you could possible tap off of one of them.

Ahh, just thought of something,
The converter charger section outputs a max of 12 amps DC.  This is seen at the "filtered" fuses as well as the battery.  That output also varies depending on battery load requirements.  If your lighting circuit (tap for lighter plug) is connected to one of those 3 "filtered" circuits, then the converter charger section may be driving the voltage high in response to the voltage drop it sees when the inverter is plugged in (mimics a low battery condition).  The "unfiltered" fuse side would not fluctuate like that because it is not driven by the charger section.  Addiionally,  a 200 watt  inverter can pull up to 18 amps at full AC load.  That is 6 amps greater than what the converters 12 amp charger section can provide.  That can spell dead battery if you are no careful.

Unfortunantly the manual ibdilbert posted for your inverter does not indicate what the high DC voltage value is.  The converter is designed to operate between 11.5 to 13.8VDC.  A normal automotive charging circuit (engine on) runs around 13.8 - 14.3VDC (typically runs at 14.1VDC).  So, I would not expect the inverter high voltage point to be less than 14.5VDC.

Dave

[moonlitcoyote]

Say I had one of those OLD tv's you were talking about that need to run off just battery. How exactly do I manage that?

From my understanding, I need to connect a wire to one of the empty fuse holders in the B section (there are 2 empty slots) then find a way to run that wire through the winny to the babies bedroom and connect my 12v socket to that? Where exactly do I hook up the ground wire?

[DaveVA78Chieftain]

Early model "12VDC" TV's also plugged into a lighter socket.  Lighter sockets are normally thought of connecting to a chassis battery (i.e. the one in the dashboard which would be a filtered source).  When connecting to the coach battery side, you have the converter (unfiltered) or battery (filtered) option which is causing the confussion.

The 6345 distribution center does not have a internal DC ground buss connection.  Ground with this unit is chassis ground.  Both the chassis and coach batteries share a common chassis ground.  The 6345 also uses that as a common ground.  That ground is the 2 large black wires on the bottom right hand side of the DC panel picture above

Here is a picture of the DC fuse board I located however, where the picture above used red for B+ and black for B-, this picture uses black for B+ and white for B-.



The "blue" wire at the top is the unfiltered output from the converter feed to 6 fuses on left side of board.
The "red" wire is the output from the charger portion of the converter which in this drawing then leads to the coach battery via the black wire.  Fees the 3 right side fuses.
The "white" wire (ground) is the output from the converter which then leads to the coach battery via the green wire .  Which also connects to chassis ground.

Dave

[moonlitcoyote]

The 12v socket has a positive and a negative wire coming from it, so do I just ground it to the frame somewhere or do I need to ground it to a certain place?


I may just have to come up with a different solution, this seems confusing and I dont want the babies room catching fire because I did something wrong.

[Oz]

A ground wire can be connected to any steel which connects to the chassis or into any existing ground wire.  Whenever I add a 12v accessory (light, cigarette lighter, etc) I've always spliced it into a nearby ground wire or to where an existing ground wire is screwed into steel.

[DaveVA78Chieftain]

The only concern is to make sure the size of the negative lead ground wire is the same size as the positive wire.  Same amount of current flows through both wires.  Ground lead just as to make it to the steel chassis ground like Mark said.

Dave