was watching "Trucks" on Spike channel the other day, and they installed a 120v outlet in the side of a 250. i thought that would be great since i go to the desert alot. but i would rather it be in the bed somewhere out of the way and with the outdoor covers. was thinking on putting them on the side by the gate where my bed extender goes into. now, the main thing is that i am no electrician. so i am asking how would i connect that into. as far as power supply goes. wiring diagrams, hook up points and all that jazz, thanks guys, willie

 

The device that converts the 12VDC that your truck produces to 120VAC that a regular power outlet supplies is called an inverter. You can buy cheap (under $50) ones to power one device that plug right into a power port. I assume that if you want one to use when camping, you want to run larger things with that power, and so you'll need one that's a bit beefier (commercial inverters run around $300).

Depending on what you intend to run with this, you may also need to add a second battery to make sure your truck starts in the morning after powering devices for a long period, and that generally requires an upgraded alternator capable of charging both batteries.

If you're just looking to power a small light or something like that, a simple inverter wired into the 12v system will be fine. If you're looking to run a fridge all night with the truck not running, you'll need to beef up your electrical system or you'll kill your battery very quickly.

Decide what you intend to power and how much you can spend on it, and we can give more specific advice on what to purchase and how to install it.

Hope this helps.

Predictive

 

The system they installed on trucks was a very high dollar item consisting of an under hood generator and large power inverter box. It was capable of powering a welder. Not something you can do with a 300 buck inverter.

http://www.aurasystems.com/TrucksTV.rm


http://www.aurasystems.com/

 

Yeah, I was thinking he wanted to run a small appliance like a refrigerator or heater, not weld body parts on site. I gotta get that channel; it looks like an interesting show.

That Auragen genset looks like the bolt on generators the Army uses in Humvees. Pretty neat setup if you need 5kw in the field.

Predictive

 

Predictive, hey, all i wanted to run was a small flood light, and/or a radio to listen to some tunes and a portable t.v. vcr setup. i have a 13 inch t.v. that would be awesome to throw in a tent out there, nothing big. yeah i know i have a radio in the truck, but it was more along the lines of running it into my tent to help sleep!! any ideas? as far as money goes, hell, i guess that all depends on what i need to hook this up! willie

 

Lucky for you I just made a pot o' coffee! Here goes...

One easy option is to get appliances that all run on battery power, buy a bunch of rechargeables and a small inverter, and let ithem charge during the week. A few sets of batteries per device would do you.

Another alternative is to get a portable power supply. This are all in one devices that have an internal battery, charge from a wall socket at home and/or your truck's electrical system, and have a built-in inverter. You just plug your stuff into the portable PS and use it. It's a big, luggable, rechargable battery. One big upside with these is that you can go as far from the truck as you want.

These things run from small and cheap (don't last long with a good load, but only $80) to huge and fairly expensive (~$300, but might make it a weekend if you're really frugal). Here's a midrange example.

You can also get some pretty nice, super-quiet portable generators for under a thousand bucks (WELL under a thousand if you're deaf and don't mind the equivalent of a continuous jackhammer when you're watching TV).

However, I understand these solutions lack the cool factor of modding your truck, so without further adieu:

To provide portable power without a generator running constantly (this includes idling your truck until it runs out of gas), you need a few things:

- A battery to store the power.
- A way to charge the battery.
- An inverter to turn the battery's DC voltage output into AC voltage (which your appliances use).

If you want a plug in the bed, you'll first need to add another battery to your truck for the purpose of powering your devices. Trying to use the truck's starter battery will leave you walking a long way home. For this application you want a deep-cycle type of battery, because they are designed to be fully charged and discharged many times without degrading.

Batteries are rated in amp-hours. This number defines how long a battery will provide a specific load in amperes from a full charge. An example of a good battery for your purpose is an Optima Yellow Top , which is rated at 75 amp-hours. If for instance your TV drew 3.5 amps, you could run it for about 21 and a half hours (Optima states that their batteries are rated for a 20 hour maximum continuous load. You get the idea).

To get a roughish idea of how long this will power your stuff, look for stickers on them that show the unit's current draw (this will be in amps - .5A is half an amp). Add them all up and that's your continuous current draw.

To charge this battery, you would connect it to the same charging system that your truck uses for the starter battery with a couple of mods. The most important is a system that allows you to drain the 'camping' battery but not the starter battery so you can get home. The simplest (and my personal preference) is to have a big switch that chooses which battery is being used.

Another more high tech option is a solenoid kit that isolates the batteries during normal operation, and will pull from the 'camping' battery automatically in case your normal battery ever dies and your truck won't start.

Several companies make dual battery installation kits; the most popular seems to be Painless Wiring (their dual battery wiring kit costs about $100 and comes with all the installation goodies except the battery and battery tray).

Batteries get charged from the truck's alternator when it's running. When you add a second battery, it's possible that the stock alternator won't be able to keep up, and neither battery gets fully charged. You fix this by installing a heavy duty alternator. There's about a million companies that make these, and they run from about $350 to serious sticker shock for the ambulance strength ones. (It's possible you won't need to upgrade the alternator, but I wouldn't do without it, and I'd have to dig into the Ford specs first to find out for sure).

Finally, you have to get an inverter to turn that new 12VDC source into the 120VAC your TV uses. Inverters are rated by the power they can handle in watts, which basically translates to how much stuff you can use at one time. Here is a midsized example . If you decide to go ahead with this I can help you calculate what size inverter is appropriate, but this one is a good guess.

Note: Inverter manufacturers will tell you that their inverters will 'auto shutoff' so you don't need all this dual battery jazz. They lie.

After installing your inverter, you run some cabling to your bed, cut out and install your outlet sockets, and voila - your truck is now a portable generator.

Looking back at our pricing:

Battery: $140
Battery Tray: (make your own or pay a huge sum for a piece of sheet metal)
Install Kit: $100
Alternator: $350
Inverter: $175
Misc cabling, fuses, etc: ~$100

Total parts: $865

Being able to keep your beer cold after a hurricane destroys your neighborhood: Priceless

(I am moving next week from Chesapeake, VA, after repeated beatings from storms that leave us without power for upwards of a week. Oh look, here comes another one.)

Be aware this is all what I consider the 'right' way to do this. There are cheaper and easier methods, but I consider them unwise at least and unsafe at worst.

The whole project can be easily done in a weekend once you get all the gear ready, and you'll need to be comfortable with turning wrenches on your truck and drilling small holes in it for the wiring.

Having said all that, if you plan to go ahead with the project I'll be happy to help out with the planning. There are also a lot of people here who are a lot smarter than I am who will chime in to get you watching TV in the desert with a cold one.

Hope this helps.


**edit**

The stock alternator in the 2004 F-150 is the Ford 3G, which is a high output alternator (130A output at speed). This should be fine for charging the dual battery setup, so the job is cheaper than I had thought (around $500 for parts), and a good bit easier as well.

Predictive

 

you must've been an electrcian or still are huh? wjhat a wonderful bunch of info. now to me, all that money seems a little to steep. but by looking at your edit, that i should be able to run duel batts. without a alternator upgrade. the thing is, is that i only go to the dessert maybe once every three months, if that! so to me, it would be sensless to run all that jazz for something i would not be doing quite often. another thing is, what about the power receptacles that are in the truck? i have a supercrew and in the back seat, there is a receptacle just like a lighter plug in. what i have been doing is, running the t.v. out of that. just to clue you in, the t.v. is a travel one. it comes with two types of plugs. one for home use, and one for a cigarette lighter hook up. so it work just by itself coming from the trucks battery, but i want to be able to run an extention cord, to a tent. so i'm not really looking to fire up anything 'big time', just small stuff. but, i also do not want to kill my truck's battery while i'm chillin in the tent at night, or i fall asleep with it on. so what about that? now also, if i do run an inverter, secondary battery, where would i mount it up into? i understand what your telling me, but for my needs, i'm looking for the easist, and cheapest way out!!! got any inputs to that matter?

 

I used to install and repair mobile satellite systems for the military and commercial shipping. 'Trons is 'trons; it all works the same way.

For your intended use the stock alternator is fine. If you were one of those people who had a $10k audio system producing 1,000 watts continuous, then probably not.

I wasn't really thinking of how frequent your desert trips are as much as how bad things could get if you became stranded in the desert due to a dead battery. Perhaps you don't go very deep into the sand, but a non starting vehicle can leave you dead in the wrong place. Years of training in paranoia, I guess.

The better inverter manufacturers do provide an auto shutoff feature that will cause the inverter to stop providing power if they sense your battery's voltage is getting low, but (paranoia again) I simply would not trust that if a dead battery meant you were walking a long way. Maybe this isn't a big deal for you, though (you could always carry a spare battery or one of those emergency starter blocks if it isn't, just in case).

One last note: your truck's battery is not designed to produce a steady amount of power over a long period of time. It's designed to provide a large amount of power for a few seconds; just long enough for your truck to start. If you use it to power things like televisions regularly with the truck off, you'll shorten its life considerably. Every few months will be just fine, every five days isn't.

If you need to go with a really inexpensive setup and the possibility of a dead battery isn't a serious issue where you camp, I'd:

- Get a decent inverter. The cheap junk you usually find at Best Buy can drain your battery dead or worst case, start a fire. I'd recommend buying from a manufacturer that only makes power equipment. Marine stores are a great place to find a quality inverter (make sure you tell them you're buying it for your car, so you get a 12v and not a 24v version).

- Run a power cable from the battery through the firewall to the inverter (You might mount the inverter under the rear seat, so you can flip it up for good ventilation when the inverter is in use).

- Run power cables from the inverter through the back wall of the cab and the bed grommets to an outdoor outlet setup.

Then you can just turn your inverter on and plug into your outlet when you need the power. You could also skip running the power to the bed and just use an extension cord (as long as it isn't too long), but you originally asked about an outlet in the bed.

As far as the inverters that plug into the power port: They are very limited in the amount of power they can deliver and are generally not as well made as direct wired ones. I won't tell you not to just buy one of these cheap and be done with it, but if I knew I'd be using mine fairly often I'd go with the direct wire. This is one of those instances where you get what you pay for.

This should be a fairly cheap option compared to a full dual battery setup. Your only big dollar item is the inverter itself, the rest is just cables, fuses, and connectors.

The most important thing is to make sure your installation is a safe one.

Predictive

 

I will side with Predictive here as for the trouble and cost involved in doing a quality and safe mod to obtaine 120v power from your truck.

However, after reading what your intended use is (I know modding the truck is nice) I would be going with a Battery operated radio (will work for months on 4 C or D batterys).

And With a Portable Power Box that has both 12V and 120v outlets, Self recharges. This is I think the easiest and versitile solution. You could even get a 5 to 15w Solar panel to recharge the Power Box during the day if the power box recharges on 12 volts.

This way, even if you leave your portable fridge pluged into it, and it draines the power box, well the fridge is also a cooler so it will remain cool all night and for a good part of the next day.

The setup that we use when we go hunting is:

Plug the Fridge on a 12v Deep Cylce Battery (175 Minute Reserve Capacity). Plug Battery on a Deep Cycle Battery Charger (Better that regular charger). The Charger is pluged into a generator.

Now this seems like a complicated setup but if you break it down, it is very simple. With this setup, we can run for weeks.

Here is how it works.

The fridge will run on the Battery for about 8 hours before the battery runs too low. So when we get up in the morning (5am), we run the generator for 60 to 90 minutes while we all get ready. That recharges the battery enough so that the fridge will be running by the time we get back for lunch. At lunch (11am) we run the generator again for 60 - 90 minutes, recharging the battery enough to almost last till we get back for the night (7pm). Then the generator runs for several hours while we have supper, a few beers and go to bed, charging the battery to about 80 or 90 percent capacity, enough so that when we start up again in the morning, the fridge is still running.

All cooking appliances run on Propane and also a few lights. We do have lights that run on 120v when the generator runs.

I have a fairly big (too big) generator to do this because it is also my home Backup Generator (Generac 4000 Watt) and I don't want to buy 2 generators. But My brother has what I think is the very best 2000W generator for this type of use

http://www.hondapowerequipment.com/gensup.asp
The 2000 watt will run a coffee maker (Of extremly important consideration on a hunting Trip)
Very quiet and incredibly easy on gas.

Just adding more gas to the fire
Dpostman

 

I didn't read all the threads but be awhere that the low priced inverters may not allow hum/noise free operation of radio/audio devices.
Reason is the AC waveform is not perfect like house voltage due to the way it is generated in the inverter circut.
There are units rated for this use but the cost goes up in proportion.
Another way to do it eaiser is to buy a combination portable starting battery with the 120vac inverter built-in and has a 12 volt/120vac sockets along with other features at less than $100 from Sears.
For lighting, use 60 watt equiv. 120 vac flouresent bulbs in a standard trouble light.
The bulbs that have a blueish light take less than 200 ma. current and will run at least 10 hours on the Sears unit.
We use this setup at the race track on sat. nites.

 

I did some electrical work this weekend (removed the back panel and installed an AMP rack).....anyway, in the process of doing my work, I saw the wire feeding that AUX power point in the rear seat. I seriously suggest you use an alternate source of power if you're gonna be using high current draw devices. The wire feeding the power port couldn't have been anything more than 16 or 18 Ga.

TonyPTX

 

I have a concern. My 3 yr old grandson kicked the rear of my console and the entire plastic cover over the 120vac outlet snapped off. My grandson was trying to fix it when I looked in the rear seat and saw exposed 120vac copper receptacles hanging out of the hole.

I stopped him immediately (ok, I yelled) as I believe this 120vac would have sufficient AMPS to kill him. When I put it back together, I noticed there is not a 3rd leg ground either. And, to me that means that there is not a GFIC to protect against shocks.

I think Ford needs to redesign the 120vac cover plate and perhaps make it screw into place instead of snapping. If my 3 year old grandson had touched the exposed receptacle and had been injured, I think I would own a piece of Ford today.

This can happen to anyone that has this receptacle in their back seat. If everyone would contact Ford and tell them of this potential, maybe a few lives could be saved.

In the meanwhile, do not allow anything to knock the 120vac cover plate off the receptacle. I'm not speaking of the spring-loaded cover, I mean the entire black plastic cap came off and exposed L1 and L2

 

i wrote FORD 0n 06/22/2012 , attached is the letter they sent back:

Hello Mike,
Thank you for contacting Ford Motor Company. My name is Clems and I'm with the Ford Customer Service Department. I received your email regarding your insights on our Ford vehicles.

I appreciate the time you have taken to write us. Please be advised that from time to time, vehicle features/options are added, deleted or modified. Decisions to make these changes take into account factors such as market trends, customer demands, engineering advances, and dealership input.

Please note that the Customer Relationship Center is unaware in advance of changes that our Engineering and Design Team may be making and the specific reasons that the changes may be made in the future. Rest assured that our Engineering and Design personnel are constantly working on ideas in improving our vehicles to address the customer’s changing needs.

Feedback such as yours allows us to examine our practices and policies to ensure that we meet or exceed the expectations of our customers in the future.

On behalf of Ford Motor Company as a whole, we regret the circumstances which caused you to write. We hope that we might have the opportunity in the future to restore your confidence in our products and service.

Once again, thank you for contacting Ford Motor Company and have a good day!

Sincerely,
Clems
Customer Relationship Center
Ford Motor Company

Sometimes e-mail communication does not allow us to gain additional information that may be helpful in responding to your inquiry. Should you feel that we have not adequately addressed your questions, please feel free to contact us via telephone at (800)392-3673 between the hours of 8am and 5pm, local time, Monday through Friday. Hearing-impaired callers with access to a TDD may contact 1-800-232-5952.

For online support visit us at: www.customersaskford.com which contains answers to frequently asked questions and links to other key product and service information.

Ford Confidentiality:
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For security reasons, please do not submit any sensitive personally identifiable information, such as credit card numbers, driver license number, SSN, DOB, etc. Thank you.

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I hope nobody gets injured or killed because Ford failed to act in a timely manner.
mike

 

I have a portable unit that plugs into the 12v power (cig lighter) OR wall plug to recharge, it provides 400 watts of 120 vac can be used while pluged into 12v power to maintain internal batt. also has a 12v power plug on unit for portable use of 12v devices and it has a larger power connector that a short jumper cable plugs into turning it into a portable jump pack for starting dead cars. it has a motor cycle batt in it so it wieghs about 20lbs easly carried.
cost about 150 bucks.
i use it on electrical jobs that i need to shut down power to a house with a flourescent drop light and it runs 8 hrs easy.


ps i love the new smileys