I am interested in going to Hot Import Nights. Though, I cannot have my battery hooked up while my car is on display. I understand that I will have to pay a fee to use one of their outlets, but what can I use to power the car while the battery is disconnected, and how?

 

they do sell converters for power (from 120v AC -> 12vdc) but most of those offer 12v as a car power outlet, so you would have to wire in a plug, i dunno about amperage tho... thats the only idea i have... can you put the batter in the trunk and only wire the sub to the battery? ive never heard of this before, as i have seen many cars with thier neon/ strobes/ radios/ lCD screens on, and for all that to work wouldnt you need the batter in the car? i dunno... i guess im wrong


what HIN were you thinking about participating in?

 

the car cant be hooked to the battery, but does that mean you cant put your stuff straight to another battery?

just buy another battery and power everything to it... so its not powering the car, but its powering the accesory stuff...

 

Yup, it is pretty confusing to me. Everytime I go to one of those shows I notice they have everything on (neon, audio, etc), but I also noticed a electrical wire runnin to the car also. It never crossed my mind to ask anyone at that time!

 

Well if they are going to charge you to plug-in, then there goes an AC->DC converter, because of course that needs to be plugged in. On a high power audio/light car, I doubt a battery (in the trunk or otherwise) would last the whole day.

The only thing that I can think of is to buy a gasoline generator. If it buts out DC 12-14 volts, then that would be all you need. If it is an AC generator, then you would also need the AC->DC converter mentioned above. However, this is costly equipment. If you can borrow it, it might just be worth the fee to plug-in to their power outlets.

 

HIN is held indoors tho and you cant run a generator in there, I was just at the show in LA a few weeks ago and most of the cars weren't running thier systems (prolly b/c of this "plug-in" charge. You will need a power supply though if you want to run your system. If you just want it on for low power apps (like quiet music, lites, etc..) I'd just get one of those battery chargers and let your equipment run your battery until you squeeze all the juice out, then before you go home, plug in the charger so that you can start your batt. not sure what the stock batt is (as I am on these forums w/o a Z, but soon one on the way) but Optima Deep Cycle batteries are the way to go.