We first made the decision to buy an Ark Pak when we were setting up our Prado for our trip around Australia.  We had very little time to get organised and even less money so a portable solution seemed like the way to go.  For those unfamiliar with the Ark Pak it is effectively a plastic battery storage box with a few things added that turn it into a totally portable 12Volt power solution.  The Ark Pak has a flip up lid that allows you access to the battery compartment and we chose a 130Ah AGM style battery, the largest we could find to fit our needs.  The cabling inside the Ark Pak has heavy gauge wire with eyelets to allow fitting to the batteries flush mount, or recessed terminals.  The underside of the lid also provides access to a range of fuses, none of which we have needed to change.  Inside the lid is housed the battery charger which takes ensures your battery receives the correct voltages through the charging cycle and this occurs whether you have connected the unit to a 12Volt or 240 Volt source.

For in car charging there is a long cable supplied with a ciga plug on the end to plug into what my Dad used to call a 'Cigarette Lighter' socket in the vehicle.  The other end of course plugs into the Ark Pak itself.  When you start the vehicle the system waits until the start battery is fully charged before commencing its charge cycle for your deep cycle battery.  Should you wish to use mains power to charge the battery you'll need to disconnect the aforementioned lead and attached the mains power lead and associated transformer.  This is a bit of a pain when you're on the road and you pull up at say, a powered site and you want to switch from the 12 Volt to 240 Volt and the unit is buried under a mountain of camping gear.  I feel that unit should have the ability to leave both cables plugged in, much like a portable fridge and when you plug into mains the unit should automatically switch to the more dominant power source.

So what other connections does the Ark Pak have?  Well there's two ciga socket outlets, an Anderson plug, a high amp terminal set and a 240 Volt outlet with a USB outlet running off the inbuilt 300 Watt inverter.