I have a couple of questions about AC/DC power converters.
Let me give ya'all some back ground on what I'm tryin' to do.
I got the aux battery mounted up under the hood on my '68 CS.
Yesterday, I checked the voltage at the battery, it was 12.50 volts.
I also checked it at the power outlet (cig lighter type) it was also 12.50 volts. No voltage drop... so far so good.
The whole idea behind hooking up a 12v power out let was so I can plug my laptop into 12v and watch movies at night in the camper, without draining the laptop battery.
When I got the computer, I also purchased the correct 12v adapter for it... specifically so I could use it in this application.
The last time I went camping, a couple of weeks ago, I tried watching a movie by plugging the laptop in with the 12v power supply.
I got power surges that caused the screen to get bright and dim, so I shut it off.
Next, I tried one of the 110 power supplies that plug into the 12v power outlet, and used the AC plug. It did the samething.
Payday, I bought a new 750 watt 115v AC power supply. I hooked it up to the battery under the hood... without the engine running, I got 103 watts.
When I fired up the engine, the wattage dropped to 98.
That left me confused...
Is that normal? How do these things work???
All I wanted to do was to watch a movie... The laptop doesn't do that when used under it's own battery power or plugged into AC at home.
It did recharge the laptop battery, but i was not able to watch the whole movie before it shut down.
Puzzled...
KaptnKA
S
