Solar. Or not. Solar parts

[Randy Keaveny]

99. Patriot.  Under bed.  Engine compartment.   Appears to be charge controller.    Red light is on.   Fuses good.   Beside that.  Component with fins.  3 or 4.  Solenoid.   Not sure it's solar.  Tried to attach photos.  But they are to big.    Any help

Thx
Randy

[Eric Maclean Co-Admin]

Randy
The quick answer is yes.
Beaver used three solar panels on the roof on those earlier coaches a small 15 watt panel connected to the chassis battery bank with no solar charge controller and two larger panel of about 40 watts each they are the ones connected to the charge controller you are looking at those two are connected to the house battery bank .
The wiring for both sets of panels are routed down from the roof along the passenger side of the rear cap along the edge of the bed frame forward to the charge controller.

It should be noted that Beaver did not use a charge controller for the small 15 watt panel as they believe the max 1 to 1.2 amp output would be no threat to the chassis battery bank.
And the house battery bank at 40. Watts x 2 or a total of 80 watts is only works out to just a little above 6 amps
As you can see these solar outputs are not much more than a trickle charge and where realistically only installed to maintain the batteries while the coach was on the sales lot to make up forany  parasitic draws from engine ECM transmission TCM and draws on the coach battery from propane and CO. Detectors.

Eric

[Joel Ashley]

There are many apps available for reducing the pixels so they are easier to email or to meet the BAC site posting guidelines limits of 300kb each or 5MB per post.  I try to keep them in the 250kb @ area.  I use an Apple Store app called “Image Compress and Resize Easily” that may not be available for Windows/Android devices.  Other apps I tried were too complex, designed for more professional use.  It takes a little practice to get the hang of it, and how it saves modified images to your photo album, but uses simple sliders to adjust down the kilobytes to under the 300kb mark.

You should review the “Guide to Resizing and Posting Photos” in the Forum Assistance (Members Only) section here.

Joel

[Randy Keaveny]

Thx for the input. So many solenoid.   I hate to start messing with them as I know 0 about what does what.    Great idea.  But without first hand knowledge.  Kind of a shot in the dark.     Thx again.   I'll just leave it as it is. 

Randy.

[Eric Maclean Co-Admin]

Randy
It's a large solenoids you see it on the firewall under the bed the large one is the boost solenoid on one side of that blue solenoids large cable is connected to the chassis batteries on the other side of the solenoid the large cable is connected to the house batteries.
The other solenoid which is down a little lower on the firewall towards the passenger side is the infamous salesman switch solenoid this is the one that turns the House power on and off to the 12 volt accessories in the coach.

Eric