electrical advice

I have a smaller welder I dont use that much and Im thinking about mounting it in my XJ. Its the lincoln 135 110v (135amp max). Here is the question, If I was to purchase an inverter, How many Watts would it take to run?

-Red

you need to calculate power in watts from
P=V*A

problem is, you have input voltage, and output current. I looked up a Pro-MIG 135 which has a max output open circuit voltage of 29V combined with 90Amps rated output (the max rating of 135 is invalid here because it will not be able to produce max open-circuit voltage, ie no current, when delivering max current) gives you 2600 watts which will be the minimum needed for full output because there are always losses in equipment. Its also rated for a max input current of 20Amps, so 120*20 = 2400watts

so basically it looks like 2500 watts should get you welding.

hope that all makes sense to you

sweet, thanks; that will work. So basically instead of buying a ready welder for 500 bucks that I will only wind up using 1-2 times, I can by an inverter, run pretty much everything I want off it for 300 bucks.

Thanks

Patrick

theoretically, ive never seen a welder run off an inverter. then again, im used to much bigger welders. Also note that on an inverter, there is as limited amount of time that one can use it at max rated output. usually on the order of 10 minutes i belive, but dont quote me on that, check the manual. I would also expect that you would need to have youre engine running so as to not kill the battery, and i dont think welding onto the chassis which is youre power supply ground is such a good ides, so make sure to only weld things that are not on the XJ.

thats true about welding to the frame, didnt even think about that one

Well,I guess there goes that Idea

i guess you could carry a pair of optima yellow tops, wire them in parallel in a completly seperate circuit from the cars electrical system to power the welder, disconnect the battery and alternator, and then weld to the chassis. or something like that.