I tried figuring this out several months ago when I was buying a power inverter. I came across one vague peice of info somewhere that led me to beleive the alternators in the 2009 5.7's were 160 amp. I was never able to find a concrete number and couldn't see it anywhere on the alternator itself so I just settled for a smaller inverter to play it safe. Now I'm looking for something a little bigger again.

Does anyone happen to know what size the alternator is on the new 5.7? Even If I could just find the part number, that would probably be helpful.

 

My 2009 4X4CC Sport is equipped with a 160 amp alternator. It only has a 625 amp battery.

 

Sheesh that was fast. Thanks! Where were you able to find that?

 

Don't you mean watts? An inverter is rated in volts and watts.

 

I asked my salesman for a list of all included items on my truck and he gave me a list of everything, with what looks like the build code for each item. It lists 160 amp alternator, (BABS).

 

Interesting. Thanks.


Well to figure out what size inverter you can run, you have to know how many amps the alternator puts out, and how many volts the system is, and multiply them. So in our case, it's 160 amps x 12 volts = 1,920 watts. Now I don't know exact specs for this alternator, but a fairly common rule of thumb (to my knowledge) is that their output at idle is about half of their rated output, so I'm guestimating 80 amps which should give me 960 watts at idling. So I could go with a 1,000 watt continuous inverter, but I'll probably play it conservatively and just go with an 800, which should take care of what I'm wanting to use it for. It should be a nice step up from my 250 watt inverter.