Sailor goes to cruisers when asking electrical car advice

[ryanluskin]

A cruiser with a question about a kustom car camping in my new Tacoma. I learned working on my sailboats that a deep cycle battery is better for home-style power usage. The truck has a start battery and comes equipped with a 110 plug. I figured I could either simply charge the deep cycle battery at home and then pop it in my truck. Or, there's already an alternator. So, maybe I could connect into the car's system and get some sort of switch that would charge the deep cycle battery after the car's start battery is charged. I'm not super mechanically inclined, so the simplest way is better. Any thoughts?

[dcstrng]

Try this or similar;
http://www.jcwhitney.com/painless-un...?filterid=u0j1

[LLCoolDave]

This site will have a few options.

Cheap RV Living.com-How to Have Electricity

[smac999]

the hardest part is getting a charge cable from the engine bay into the bed of the truck...

after that there is easy products to do what you want. a xantrax echo charger would allow you to run a smaller cable. (~10awg) but may not fully charge the battery. depends on how much battery you use and how much you drive it. a blue sea acr is another option and will charge faster but would require much bigger cable to run.

either way you'd probably end up having to charge it at home. unless you drive a lot. but it would just give you more use on your trips before dying.

if you drove it 7 days a week and only used the battery on the weekends it would probably recharge fully without plugging in.

if you drive an hour on fri, camp all weekend, an hour back on monday, and the truck sits all week. you'll need a battery charger.

[valhalla360]

If it's just a single deep cycle and minimal power consumption, a single solar panel on the roof will probably be simpler.

The bigger issue is what are you trying to run and how much power will you be using.