<VV> Christmas Lights

[Smitty Smith]

Beginning Saturday and continuing for cruise nights up until Christmas we have a set of manic chaser christmas lights. There is a spare battery in the trunk and humongously powerful inverter I built years ago when power transistors were the size of quarters. Those items will be in the trunk, powering the chaser lights which will be strung all the way 'round the beltline of the car. a fullsize, stuffed, santa claus will be in the driver's seat. We figure it should annoy most everyone within 100 feet and there will be joy all about.
Arjay Morgan
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  Smitty Says:  Arjay, for several years our club took part in the Parade of lights in Norfolk.  (before the greenies decided they didn't like cars).  Anyway we were required to light our cars which we attempted to do using commercial inverters.  Two problems with that.  One was that it didn't take many lights to pop the Circuit breakers on even the larger inverters and they would rapidly drag the battery down unless you could maintain a pretty high rpm.  Another problem was that the square wave from the inverter doesn't allow the chase lights to work.  One of our members hit on the idea of using the 12 volts from one phase of the alternator before it is rectified and boosting it backwards through a 110/12 volt transformer to get the required 110 volts AC.  The cars regulator keeps the voltage stable and the chase lights work fine.  One time Walter Carter from our club tapped into all three phases of the alternator and using three transformers, put over a thousand lights on
 his car.  A couple of notes of caution here.  This voltage developed is like house current.  Treat it with respect.  Another thing.  It takes a pretty hairy transformer to do the job.  Door bell  transformers aren't even close to meeting requirements.