At Dayton, Mendlesons was selling 12 VDC Jump Start 12VDC battery sets with 400W inverters for $10 AS-IS (something wrong with each). But the 18 AH battery was worth it alone....

I bought two.

For one, I just charged the battery, and left the blown fuses in the AC inverter. Everything else worked. The inverter was smoked and so I wont use that feature.

For B. The 400W AC inverter worked, but the DC switch panel didn't and left a constant load on the battery. So the hack shown on this web page made for a 10 minute bypassing of the switch panel while letting everything else work properly.

See http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/DaytonJunk.GIF

They were selling them by the dozens. Thought someone else might find this useful. Bob