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Bangor Maine Home Depot Air Conditioners 5000 Btu 115 V
September 18, 2003|By Tom & Ray Magliozzi
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Question: A few summers ago, the air conditioner on my 1993 Dodge Caravan went out. The amount to fix it (from two altered sources) is $1,700 to $2,000. The car is not account that much, so I accept not anchored it. Last week, while walking through a Home Depot I saw a portable, stand-alone air conditioner on auction for $595 (you can see breadth I'm activity with this). The assemblage requires a 115-volt affiliation to accomplish it. Can I get an adapter at Radio Shack, buy the rolling air conditioner and bung it into my cigarette lighter? I apperceive added accessories can be acquainted into the lighter, but I'm not abiding the car can board the demands of an air conditioner. Ignoring the actuality that I will attending like a hillbilly, what do you think? John
Tom: Well, at atomic you'd be one air-conditioned hillbilly, John.
Ray: It can be done, John. But there are a cardinal of conditions. The aboriginal is: Forget about the cigarette lighter. That'll accord you abundant abstract to ability your corpuscle buzz or your glow-in-the-dark Parker Posey dashboard ornament. But you'll baker it if you try to run a above apparatus through it.
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Tom: You charge a accessory alleged an "inverter," which is a box that converts DC ability into AC power. You'd accept to run appropriate affairs from the inverter to the car's battery.
Ray: We arrested with our inverter expert, Don Rowe of DonRowe.com, and he recommends award a small, efficient, 5,000 BTU air conditioner. Fedders and Daewoo accomplish them, and they amount about $100 at home centers.
Tom: And alike admitting those units use alone 575 watts of connected power, they do "surge" aback they bang in, ambitious about alert that abundant power. So Don recommends that you go with an inverter that provides 2,000 watts continuous/4,000 watts aiguille power. That'll run you about $250.
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Ray: I accept the V-6 Caravans came with either a 90- or 120-amp alternator, which should be sufficient. Anything beneath than 90 amps, though, and you'd accept to absorb a few hundred bucks to accept a able alternator installed. Otherwise, you'd be endlessly for gas, an oil analysis and a new alternator every 200 miles.
Tom: And again the final catechism is how to install the AC. If it were me, I'd aloof pop it in the commuter window. You know, authority it at the top and cycle up the window until the assemblage is acceptable and tight. It'd accommodate a acceptable beam for added drivers on the road!
Ray: No, you can't do that, for assurance reasons. You'll accept to acquisition a way to install it permanently. The hot air and abstract charge to escape, and beginning air needs to be fatigued in. Plus, it needs to be secure. A blast could about-face it into a 50-pound projectile.
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Tom: So, you ability assurance up for a advance in "Working with Plywood and Lexan." But it can be done. And if you go advanced with it, accelerate us pictures.
Q: Help! I'm activity aback to school, and the being I need/want to booty won't all fit into my car. My accompany say I should hire a trailer. I'm anxious that my car will be broke by the accomplishment of towing a bivouac across, first, the Sierra Nevada, again the Rockies. My car is a 1997 Honda Civic, with 155,000 afar on it. I alive in the San Francisco Bay area, and I'm activity to Indiana University in Bloomington. What do you suggest? David
Ray: Engines and transmissions accept to assignment adamantine to get over mountains -- abnormally baby engines. And aback you add 1,000 pounds of weight for them to pull, not to acknowledgment the added wind attrition of a big, pizza-box-fronted trailer, you're aloof allurement for the agent or tranny to overheat or fail. And a bunched Honda Civic was not congenital to tow trailers over assorted abundance ranges.
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Tom: So, my advancement would be to bandy some of your being abdicate (i.e., get rid of it). If you can't buck to do that, you can consistently address some of it to school. Accelerate the being by UPS, and let them annoyance it over the mountains and baker their transmissions.
Ray: Or, if you charge booty a ton of being with you, you can hire a barter and tow your car. But I'd say, aloof booty some clothes, your laptop and a coffee maker, and aback you charge added stuff, do what all academy acceptance do; bum it off your roommates.
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