The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay 12volt device on a 6volt diet?

Thought this might come in handy for anyone bullheaded
enough to still be running the original 6v system.
Made a fuel economy run yesterday in my stock 1950, 3600
and wanted a good reliable speed check. I took the TomTom
GPS out of my 2014 Silverado and plugged it into the 6volt
lighter socket in my '50 and ran it for 5 hours/150 miles
and it worked perfectly.
Apparently the voltage regulator in the GPS is able to still
operate the device on a lower input voltage. I'm pretty
sure the wallwart to charge it on the house voltage, which
by the way, has been lost almost from day one, outputs
around 5v, that's quite typical for SS devices.
So it looks like the 12v input is dropped to a lower voltage
when using it with the 12v system and it will run it on a 6v system also.

Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

That is logical, glad you tried it.
Next someone try a phone charger, I bet they also work on 6V, as the phone and USB devices are also about 5V

Good idea Grigg.
I Picked up a couple of those lighter to USB adapters last
month, not knowing that the Silverado and Sweetie Face's
'15 Ford already had USB ports.
So I will...try one in the '50 and see if it will power up
my flip phone.

dg

So now you're telling me I didn't need to spend the $70 for my 6-12v stepup to run my GPS???? Thanks Denny!!

Works for me Tiny.
http://www.pbase.com/dennygraham/image/162557803
dg

I might be wrong, but I am pretty sure that the USB specification requires 5.0 +- maybe 0.5 VDC output. So cigarette lighter to USB converters should all work even at 6V.

Bob

Denny has this habit of solving LOTS of problems we all face.... AFTER we have already spend bazillions of our hard earned dollars on non solutions. Thanks ALOT Denny...

Kidding of course, but lately I have been looking into this very issue because I am into the Arduino Project. It is a very cool solution for dealing with electronic solutions.

In my research, I found that most power supplies have large input spectrum to small output spectrum. Any 5 volt cell charger (DC of course) that plugs into your 12v cig lighter port will work great with 6 volts input and still maintain 5 volts. BUT, its a crap shoot because you never know what the engineer who designed it was thinking. Test it, and chances are good it will work, but its not guaranteed.

There in lies the problem Deve. We don't know what sort of input voltage regulation the device has built into it's circuitry.
As I posted earlier, your input for most SS devices is around 5v.
Just take a look at 90% of your wallwarts and once the
AC is stepped down it's rectified and regulated at about 5v.

I need to pick up another adapter kit to check out the cell
phomes. I know I've got a couple of plug adapter kits around
but never can find them when I need them.

I got the ball rollin', so now maybe some of you geniuses can
catch it and run with it.
dg

Ding ding ding, we have a winner

PC USB ports were originally spec'ed to 5 vdc and the industry grew from it. If a device can power off of a USB port it'll work in an old antique 6v auto system, negative ground that is

Dave

I did one of my infamous Tips of the Week concerning stepping down the 5 volt chargers to work with Kids toys that need 3 volts. Its a really cheap way to set the kids up with continuous power without going through batteries like they are going out of style.

http://forums.devestechnet.com/foru...ip-of-the-week-16-for-january-17-23-2016

Not exactly the same thing, but the circuit that is from Ebay in the article is a miracle worker. You can have 32 volts or less IN and anything between 32 and 0 volts OUT and it runs the same amperage expected. I use that to simulate a 6 volt power supply for running gauges, even heater motors from a 12 volt regulated power supply. That is wonderful about it is, no matter what you input is above the output, the output stays the same. 12 in, 6 out. Or, 9 in, still 6 out.

I can tell you firsthand that the step down charger works fantastic! My elliptical machine required 4 Size D batteries. I used an old charger from one of the kid's video games with 9V DC output. The battery terminals have been connected with the step down charger which has been set at 6.2V DC.

No more batteries.......

Thanks for the tip Deve!

old computer power supplies work well for powering 3V, 5V, 12V DC stuff in the shop and home

Bill

Very true Bill! Lots of people have them lying around too. What the circuit that I suggested in my rant does however is augment that capability to give you all of the in-between voltages with resolutions in the millivolts. Any combination of battery operated stuff can be made battery-less.

On my 6 volt 53 that works fine with my cell phone... until I true the lights on at whatever RPM... check it out.

Note: I used another adapter for the cigar lighter socket and there was no problem when the lights were turned on??

Sounds like to much voltage drop due to the draw the f the headlights. I'd first check and clean connections and then evaluate if the cigar lighter is connected and grounded at ideal locations to minimize effects of voltage drop from other loads.

The reason all of us have things working with a 6 volt battery is what's called 'TTL' logic. It is based on bi-polar transistors and is 5 volt based. 0 volts is low and 5 volts is high in a binary operation.