That’s probably his house, I really don’t see the humor but definitely see the suffering.
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I only saw funny, goofy redneck engineering, but your explanation sounds reasonable. Shit's fucked!
That was my thought as well. I knew a guy that had a similar setup. They had a small pickup truck small camper on the back. He worked nights at a minimum wage job and slept in camper during the day. He migrated around to different stores parking lots.
Running gas for the generator was less expensive than running the engine.
Used to have the same car while working security. Id often have to sleep in it between shifts, as it would be too expensive to drive home between shifts if I was far away. Id also sometimes have only 6 hours between shifts, making it make more sense to just crash in the car. I had an inverter tied to the battery, a small solar panel gorilla glued to the roof, and 3 car batteries in the trunk. A box fan in the passenger window, a 24 inch TV and a PlayStation would often come with me, too. Had a fucking kettle and a redi-set-go pizza cooker that was a beast for cooking just about anything. Effectively I would live in that car for several days out of the week, sitting in it during my shift playing PlayStation, and sleeping in it wherever I could find between shifts.
While it may not have been the most comfortable, that is the sort of offbeat life experience that I live for. Very cool setup you had.
It was pretty great. I got paid (barely lol) for sitting on my ass and playing video games. I only wish I had had the foresight to use that time to go to college online instead of PlayStation or embroidery taking up the time.
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What's the issue? It is a window conditioner, and it is in a window. Looks totally legit to me.
The window-wart AC in a vehicle - especially if it never had AC from the factory in the first place - is something I can understand. Ugly AF, but at least it’s functional.
The generator on top? What TF is up with that? Surely it would be simpler to swap out the alternator for something more powerful that can push up to 15A on a 110V converter.
12v boat motors are for only trolling. So technically it powers a boat, but not really... They're typically only 1hp. You could get a 1hp AC, but they're not designed to run on 12v. You'd need to change DC to AC and then step up to 120v at least.
You'd run out of power pretty fast either way if you're planning to use the AC for extended period of time, just like trolling motors. And no quick way to recharge. Alternator suggested above is somewhat realistic as some cars actually do come with a 120V outlet (albeit at limited wattage not enough to power a full sized window AC). Though, all of this is rather inefficient setup and burning more gas.
I'm not familiar with how much power the window AC units use, but wouldn't a DC to AC inverter work to power it? It would reduce the redneck factor by at least half though....
The inverter pulling a charge off the crank in no way, shape, or form, could produce enough power for a window AC unit. The loss in conversion from DC->AC->DC alone is enough to melt an alternator.
Based on the responses to your question, the answer is either yes or no.
Still waiting on maybe.
Some assumptions have to be made, but it should be pretty likely to work fine.
Car alternators can output at least 50 amps generally (700watts). Small (5000btu) Window air conditioners uses about 450w, even if the conversion is horrible, it'd still be at least 80% efficient, so 560 watts would be available for the window air conditioner to run from.
You're completely neglecting the load on the car's electrical system. I once had a Subaru that couldn't put enough voltage to the cigarette lighter to charge a phone. Also an AC power supply is going to draw the full 1300w from the outlet.
Now it needs an auxiliary fuel tank on top of the car that equalizes the fuel level between the tank in the generator and the tank in the car.