Over the weekend I picked up my 50 quart ARB freezer near Federal Way, WA. On Sat I pre-cooled the empty freezer in a garage using AC. The freezer temp was set to 10F. Early Sunday am I connected the freezer to my fully charged ArkPak in my 4Runner. Note it's using a new 130AH battery. Around mid-day I went to the military commissary & shopped for an hour or so & then put all the purchased frozen/cold stuff in the freezer. Just around 98% charge remained. I took my time driving back to Portland as my dog gets lots of breaks. Once home, the charge remaining was still well over 90%. I emptied the freezer, but deliberately left it connected to the ArkPak in my garage which gets pretty hot and set the freezer temp to 15F. Yesterday after work, roughly 30 hours after I first connected the freezer to the ArkPak, I checked both the freezer & Arkpak. The empty freezer was still around 15F even though in my hot garage. The ArkPak showed about 12.3v and roughly 60% charge remaining. For testing purposes, I lowered the temp to zero which quickly dropped the ArkPak to about 12.1v & about 50% charge remaining. Makes sense because now the compressor was really running. Since it was sunny, I connected my 80w Zamp solar panel to the ArkPak for a couple of hours which brought the ArkPak almost back up to 12.7v. The charge remaining kept changing on me though. It would go from 50% up to 100% and then back down & everything in between (but the 12.7 stayed pretty consistent). This morning, roughly 48 hours after I first connected my freezer, the ArkPak showed 12.1v and 75% charge remaining. The freezer was hovering around 13 degrees. I suspect that I could have gone another day before dropping the ArkPak charge back to 50%. I also suspect that if the freezer were full of stuff during the entire time, the drain on the ArkPak would have been much less. I have little doubt that the Zamp, ArkPak, & ARB Freezer trio will make for a most excellent outing!
FWIW - I did try using the ArkPak's DC to DC charger. I hoped that I could charge the ArkPak while driving & in-turn power the freezer at the same time. Couldn't get the freezer to turn on this way. Either I'm missing something in the operation or the fact that you have to turn the battery isolator on when powering devices means you can't charge the ArkPak with the DC charger & also run a device all at the same time. But again, maybe I missed something?
