I won a Power Armor Solar through the Torklift Golden Ticket program and I am sharing my experience with this product.
Torklift's new POWER ARMOR SOLAR is an all-aluminum battery box with an integrated10Watt Zamp solar panel attached to the locking lid. It is intended to maintain a pair of RV batteries' charge state through a trickle charge during storage, and offer theft deterrence. For a single battery, a separate charge controller is required.
Note that the Power Armor Solar would be a good option for those with rooftop-solar rigs that are covered while in storage, as long as the PAS panel is exposed.
For the two Group 27 Interstate batteries on our Lance 1985 trailer, we received the new 26.5" [inside diameter] Power Armor Solar. Its front and back panels are silver diamond plate riveted to the single-pieced roll-formed, black and gray powder-coated sheet creating the bottom and end panels. The box is good-looking, extremely sturdy and resists deformation while holding 106lbs. of batteries.
As LOA members with trailers up to the mid-2015 model year have found, the stock battery trays from Lance have proved difficult when installing locking, metal battery boxes. The trays are slightly narrow, making seating the boxes a patience-trying effort. Also, the trays are placed about 2" too close to the lower nose of the trailers above the A-frame, crowding and displacing the box tops and lids. R. Spiker filled the tray rails with square tubing and mounted the box 2" forward: The Not So Easy Torklift Battery Box Install
2015 1/2 trailers have a new battery tray integrated into a recess in their new noses and may need another box designed for them.
Torklift has four mounting options in their installation manual at this time. For Lance TTs, one may choose to remove the stock tray and mount directly on the A-frame IF the box will span the rails and one wants to drill new holes in the A-frame [Opt. 1]. If the back edge does not span the A-frame, Torklift supplies angle extension brackets to mount at the lower back edge of the box [Opt. 2]. Should the box fit between the factory support rails, it can mount within the stock tray, without the angle extensions [Opt. 3]. Option 4 rides on top the tray rails.
I chose to not remove the stock tray and drill new holes, thinking doing so might weaken the A-frame. I found the box we received is both too long and too wide by a small margin to fit within our tray. The roll-formed bottom wraps up and over the diamond plate sides, giving an extra 1/4" of width. The old-style welded all-diamond plate box is sometimes ground to fit, removing the bottom edges' raised diamonds, as reported recently by Trax here:
https://community.lanceowners.org/top...attery-box-install-1
I chose Option 4: using the angle brackets to span the front and back tray rails, on top of them, and not drill the A-frame. However, because of the Lance design, I did depart from the well-illustrated manual's plan of bolting through the slots in one side of the brackets. Boring one 1/4" hole in the back rail and one in the end rail, with matching holes in the UNSLOTTED sides, I bolted through these with 1/4"-20x 2" hex bolts [extra purchase from hardware store]. Note my placements in the photos [allow room for the washers and nuts to fit against the A-frame rail!]. On each end, one bolt goes inside, through the box, the angle bracket and, 1" lower, the end rail of the tray [avoid drilling your power cables!]. The other bolt goes through the end of the bracket and the back rail of the tray. Self-tapping screws [four] go through the pre-drilled holes in the corners of the box after drilling 3/16" holes through the brackets cradling the box's ends.
Where to drill the tray:
Where to drill the brackets [twice] and box end [once] to match:
2" bolt inside through box, bracket and tray end rail:
Corner self-tapping screws through brackets:
2" bolt through bracket and back rail [bracket slots on upright side]:
Load 'em up [Caution - avoid arcing the batteries and box with the wrench!]:
Lock it:
Done [ain't it purty?]:
Several LOA members contributed input for refinement of this new product, including Frank 2285, WoodGlue and Randy, and Torklift made many positive changes from the early prototypes to work with our Lances. "Thank You" to the great team at TORKLIFT!!!
LINK: http://www.torklift.com/index.php/products/security/powerarmor
[Hey! This is our first real MOD!!!] Plance
