Does anyone know about ARK Portable battery boxes and where to buy them

[Corey]

Thanks, that was a great thread.
The seller is gone until the 6th of this month, and the original ad is closed, but he has more listed in the original ad to link to.
I may have to pull the trigger on getting one.

 

[Corey]

Looked up other choices also on a folding 100 watt unit.
Amazon has some, but the case is plastic, and looks like no carry bag.
More $$$ than the Ebay one though.
This one too has a built in charge controller.
http://www.amazon.com/Instapark-Pow...&sr=8-5&keywords=folding+solar+panel+100+watt

 

[MartinfromArk]

Hi Scott,

It has just come to my attention that we have received an order from you for an ArkPak but for some strange reason it came through on our Test Site which was supposed to have been deactivated after we launched our new site 3-4 weeks ago but was mistakenly not done so (it has been now). However I wanted to let you know that we are processing your order anyway and our US Team will be in touch with you asap - hopefully tomorrow - to confirm that we have shipped it out to you.

Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you !

Enjoy your ArkPak !!

Martin

 

[Corey]

13.3V, 76% charged, 6.5 hours to full systems go!

Hoorayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
I received a brand new ArkPak today, and already boxed up the first one and it will be on its way back to Chicago come Monday.

Got home today and pulled the battery out of the first ArkPak and put it into the new one, and set the battery up for AGM, 100 amp hour, and it showed 12.4V like it did with the first ArkPak.
Plugged in the new charger and within a few minutes it went into charge cycle with the above info.

So it seems the first ArkPak was defective.
It was not the AC charger, as I had tested it per ArkPaks instructions to me, and it was putting out healthy voltage, so it was something in the electronics topside in the case.

Will keep an eye on this and see how it goes.

ArkPak has excellent customer service!

 

[Corey]

This is great.

14.3V, 90% charged, and 4 hours to go.

I am kind of tickled to see this, as the most I ever saw the battery before on the other ArkPak get up to was around 12.7V.

 

[Ed B]

Glad to see Arkpak took care of you. I am on a weekend trip and utilizing the 12V charger and have my fridge plugged into it. Working fine so far. Going to the Off-road Expo Sunday and hope to talk to the Arkpak folks there.

 

[Corey]

Yes, so am I.
It is in float cycle now, 100% charged, and 13.2V.
Hopefully their engineers can take a look at my first unit and diagnose it and see what was happening with it.

Have fun at the expo.

 

[Brett From Ark]

I received my ARB 50 fridge a couple of days ago so have decided to test the Arkpak. Ran the fridge for 24 plus hours to cool it down and plugged it into the 12v plug. The Arkpak showed 13.1 V and 100%. 30 minutes later it is reading 12.4V and 96%. Appears that the battery is discharging way too fast if I am not supposed to let it get below 12.2V without recharging it. Any suggestions?

Hi Ed B

from my understanding you meet my colleagues Martin and Mark at the 4x4 expo and they explained to you that you can go all the way down to 11.0 volts with your deep cycle battery.

any more questions please ask

P.S i am the better looking bloke hehehehhe

Regards

Brett from Ark

 

[Brett From Ark]

Today I connected the ArkPak to the car battery and charged the fridge from 22 to -4. After 5 min I got the warning “Alarm open circuit”. This is not the first time I got this alarm I usually disconnect the charger for 20 min and after everything is ok. This time I connected the mains supply charger, It stated the charging cycle again and it was charging between 14.5 to 14.6, the fridge started working again and once it cut out the charge went up to 15.2 for a few seconds and I got “Alarm open circuit” again. What can be causing this?

Hi wallrats

i have a few questions for you please to help me understand what you are doing when the alarm open circuit happens.

1) what type of battery do you have in the Ark Pak is it a AGM (absorb Glass Matt) GEL, Calcium or wet cell (lead acid) battery ?

2) does the alarm open circuit only occur in the boost cycle ?

3) when it the alarm occurs are you using the 110v home charger that came with the Ark Pak or your own battery charger it does not matter which one i just need to know to confirm what is happening.

will await your reply before i can give additional information

also depending on what battery you tell the Ark Pak yo have in it the Ark Pak will not exceed 14.9 volts in boost cycle please refer to page 4 of your instruction manual under the section listed as charge control you will see the max voltage listed for each type of battery, i suspect you are using an external charging device to charge the Ark Pak this is ok but there is a trick to get it to work correctly

Regards

Brett from Ark

 

[Brett From Ark]

Hi Corey, Try putting another battery. I have the battery charging/float cycle for the past 4 weeks, no problems at all. My only issue I have is the “Alarm open circuit”. I have looked at the manual and could not find anything about the warning

Hi Wallrats

please refer to page 15 point number 3 on your instruction manual to understand what an Alarm open circuit means if you cant find it please let me know and i will email you a copy

Regards

Brett from Ark

 

[Brett From Ark]

The battery hit 12.2 V this morning and I got 42 hours of use running the ARB fridge. I was hoping to get a bit more based on the numerous people who have said they are getting 3-4 days from their batteries. The fridge was in the garage and the temperature probably stayed between 75-80. I put two gallons of water in the fridge, maybe I may have gotten a bit more time if it had more stuff in it.

Hi Ed B

just wanted to make sure my colleagues Martin and Mark explained to you that you can take the battery down to 11V olts as a safety the Ark Pak cust out at 10.5 volts as below this its a kill zone for a battery

Regards

Brett from Ark

 

[Ed B]

Thanks Brett, they did. I appreciated the opportunity to meet and ask some questions I had. I haven't done any additional testing yet but will when I get a spare weekend. Thanks for the followup and FYI Mark said he was the better looking one of the group!

Take care,

Ed

 

[Brett From Ark]

Corey,

I had the LCD on the entire time. I am going to recharge and continue to test run times. I will turn the LCD off and put more stuff in the fridge. I would be happy if I could get 3 good days out of it. Solar is in the plans but I need to save for the panel I want. Hopefully Brett will chime in on the issues you are having. Good luck if you end up having to use it tomorrow.

Later

it is really great to see everyone contributing there experiences with the Ark Pak and sharing there knowledge, this is excellent to see, as always if anyone has any questions they would like answered please ask away

Best Regards

Brett From Ark

 

[wallrats]

Hi wallrats

i have a few questions for you please to help me understand what you are doing when the alarm open circuit happens.

1) what type of battery do you have in the Ark Pak is it a AGM (absorb Glass Matt) GEL, Calcium or wet cell (lead acid) battery ?

2) does the alarm open circuit only occur in the boost cycle ?

3) when it the alarm occurs are you using the 110v home charger that came with the Ark Pak or your own battery charger it does not matter which one i just need to know to confirm what is happening.

will await your reply before i can give additional information

also depending on what battery you tell the Ark Pak yo have in it the Ark Pak will not exceed 14.9 volts in boost cycle please refer to page 4 of your instruction manual under the section listed as charge control you will see the max voltage listed for each type of battery, i suspect you are using an external charging device to charge the Ark Pak this is ok but there is a trick to get it to work correctly

Regards

Brett from Ark

Hi Brett,
Thanks for your questions.
1) The battery is an Optima Bluetop 75 Ah AGM. I set my Ark Pak on AGM and 70 Ah.
2) No it was normal charging at the time and Weaco was working. Once I take off the charger the warning goes. Let it rest for like 10 min, reconnect and no warning. This also happened when we where travelling.
3) The alarm always occurs when I was using the Ark Pak battery charger, but last time it happened I changed to the 240v home charger.

Hope this helps. I am very happy with the product and would recommend it.

Best Regards
Charles

 

[peakjunkie]

Bombproof, Reliable Power

The promised field report on taking Arkpak to remote Utah for 5 day trip is that it performed flawlessly. I was just a little nervous relying on it and an ARB fridge since there's no backup play out there if something goes wrong (as compared to using a "reliable" Yeti cooler).

I was shocked at how little power the ARB and our LED lights and 12V camera adapter pulled from the DieHard Platinum 31M battery.

The only time that we meaningfully ran the battery down was charging a few of my friends' laptops using an extension cord plugged in to the inverter but otherwise, it was a slow-drain and robust solution.

Nitpiks (which I'm sure Arkpak has heard before):

1. I wish it had a visible icon on the LCD display when the box is plugged in and charging from the car's 12v. Yes, the plug has the small green LED but it would be nice on the LCD screen (or am I missing something).
2. I wish there was a 12V at one end besides the two on the side. This way, the "box" could stay "box shaped" and things piled around it more compactly. Currently, the top sits up just a little bit and a 12v sticks out the side just a little bit.

Again, these are NITS to keep the engineers employed - this is a top-tier product IMO after crisscrossing the SW drinking cold bevs, keeping batteries charged, watching movies and lighting up the evening and dawn.

Super happy with the set-up and amazed my colleagues with the seamless new found "luxury in the outback".