Steve,
Blindly running a large inverter on a car for long durations is not a smart thing to do. In the worst case scenario, the battery and the alternator will get roasted. Basically, the alternator will get roasted if it runs a duty cycle that it wasn't designed for. If the inverter is drawing more power than the alternator can provide, the alternator is going to run 100% duty cycle. Car batteries aren't design for deep cycle draw...hence they can also get roasted.
Inverters are nice...until they blow up. IMHO, they are pretty finicky things, so try not to run them near their rating. Somewhere around 50% of the their rating should help things. If you have worked with VFDs, then these inverters are the cheap version of a VFD.
- Victor.
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