Hi everyone, so I finally bought myself a Griots random orbital polisher after struggling to take out swirls by hand. The catch is I live in a condo and we have no working power outlets in my garage, courtesy of hurricane Sandy. No timeline for when/if they can be repaired so I'm without a power source for the polisher. Can I use a power inverter attached to my battery to power it or will I end up frying it? I did find a post earlier on from Octaneguy mentioning something about needing a 1500 watt inverter as a possibility, but I wanted to see if anyone here has had any experience with this.

 

i wouldn't.
can ya run an extension cord to a working outlet ?

 

I've been looking into where the nearest functioning outlet it, but it looks like 300 feet. I haven't tested it yet to see if it was damaged.

 

I used to do detailing demos all the time at car shows on a Honda 2000W inverter - worked great with no issues. 1500W should be fine as well for most buffers.

If an extension cord is available, it is certainly preferred, but I wouldn't worry about hurting the buffer.

 

The MINI's battery is tiny! I ran mine flat, while listening to the radio while I hand washed and waxed mine. I think that a small generator would be your best option.

Dave

 

My apologies - missed the part about running it off your battery.

Don't do that.


Small, gas powered inverter or an extension cord.

 

Thanks for the replies and input everyone. I'm trying to work with the management copmany of the building to push through the repairs. I have an outlet about 40 feet from my parking spot, so this would obviously be my best option, but I may be waiting a few months for it to be fixed. In the meantime, I will just mooch off some neighbors with garages and the like.

 

If I were going to try the inverter, it definitely would have had to have been with the car on. These batteries wouldn't survive a few hundred watt drain for long at all. My question was would it potentially hurt the eletrical system, which I fear it would and certainly don't want to find out. Just interested to see if anyone has had experience here. Since the responses have been no, that confirms my fears that it wouldn't be a good bet. Thanks again for the replies and giving me your experiences with this though.

 

Don't try to run an inverter from the car at all, even with the car running.

A buffer is a fairly high-draw tool, and you don't want to put that kind of variable load on an inverter like that.

My earlier comment was stupid - I saw "inverter" and immediately thought of the little gas-powered generator/inverter unit that was terrific for my polishing demos where I didn't have access to a plug. I'd never, ever run an orbital on a system that was powered by the car itself, even indirectly. Lots of dimensions for things to go wrong...

 

Thanks for the insight. Looks like mooching off of friends with

 

Thanks for the insight. Looks like I'll be becoming a closer friend to a few buddies of mine that have garages for the next few months until my garage's outlets are repaired.