Power inverter
 

Im looking for a power inverter to put in the back if my jeep. Im going to be using it to power a small air mattress pump & maybe some electronics nothing that will need to much power. My question is what wattage will I need for my inverter & how hard is it to wire it right off the battery or is it better to go to the cigarette lighter plug?

The first thing to determine is if the things you want to power can tolerate modified sine wave (cheaper), or if pure sine wave (more expensive) is required.

Some of the lower power inverters can be plugged into the cig lighter, but may reduce the output when not connected directly to the battery. I had a cheap 400w that would reduce to 150w when connected with the cig lighter adapter.

If you run power to the rear from the battery, you need to consider the load the wire will see, and chose a large enough gauge to safely carry the load.

I have a pure sine wave 600w inverter in the back. Power to it is through a switchable circuit breaker at the battery, and two 4awg wires to the cargo compartment. There is a plug on the ends, so I can power different accessories, or even charge another battery. You can see the plug in the second photo, over the right fender well.
I grounded it with a dedicated wire back to the battery. I didn't want to ground a large current draw that distance through the body.
My inverter, compressor, and jumper cable have matching plugs.
Here are some pictures:

http://i776.photobucket.com/albums/y...terBreaker.jpg

http://i776.photobucket.com/albums/y...orFullFlat.jpg

So a pure sine is better & a 600 watt will be fine for powering little stuff or could I go lower? & let's say powering a hair dryer since they are notorious for tripping breakers & stuff

A pure sine wave is better, but don't spend the money on it if you don't need it. That's determined by what you will be running off the inverter. I have a few things that will not run well on modified sine wave power.

As far as wattage, only you can determine what you will need, by taking inventory of what you will be powering.

edit to add:
A hair drier takes a lot of wattage, I believe.

I wont be running a hair dryer unless the girl wants to so ill probably end up using one camping sometime so I just need to see what the wattage on a hair dryer is & buy an inverter to match I guess

I have a 1000 watt converter that I jsut haven't gotten around to putting in the JK yet. But one think to keep in mind that the farther away from the batter you mount your converter the big the wire will need to be to carry the proper power to the converter. Mine the directions state that it needs to be mounted within about 5 feet of the battery and gives the wire size need to.

Also it never hurts to have more power than is needed. Recently we had a power outage at the house right at dinner time and the kids weren't going to wait any longer so I got the generator out and pluged the microwave into it, the generator is 1850 watts and the microwave is a 1000 watts but the generator struggled to power the microwave up to full power. Like with winches figure out how much you need and then double it.

Simple solution.....wash hair....take top down on Jeep....go for a drive