RC Pilot Jim
Senior Member
About two months ago our Flex Renogy panel started acting up and I thought "Darn" Now I have a bad panel also.
I checked with two of my sources of info, Photo HC and Dr' J. Both advised checking all connections with a voltmeter.
Doing this I discovered the flex panel is working great - producing 19.5 volts 11am - 1pm. Plugging my portable into roof connector gave me an instant 14.5 volts at the solar panel side of the controller. I deduced the "female" part of the SAE connector attached to the panel was not working all the time.
More emailing with Harv resulted in taking out the connector, soldering the two cables together and running them through a small junction box see pics.
If you decide to change out your roof connector,
1. I budgeted 1-2 hours for this job and it took 3
2. Slowest part is unscrewing the sheet metal screws as they are covered with white caulk
3. I used a box cutter to scrape off enough caulk to get my 1/4" socket onto the screw head
4. Mark the positive wires with red tape and do one wire at a time
5. Cut the wires close to the roof connector as there is not a lot of extra in the roof
6 Cover the panel with a blanket to lower the voltage
7 put shrink tube over the soldered part
8. I used one screw to anchor the junction box
9. Tub and tile caulk to seal the bottom
The parts can be bought through Amazon see links,
Junction box
Cable Mounting
You will need to drill 3 holes in the Junction box. Two half inch on two sides and one 1" in the bottom. I used a drill press to get a clean hole.
Finished job looks good and I got rid of the wires that were sticking up in the air.
I checked with two of my sources of info, Photo HC and Dr' J. Both advised checking all connections with a voltmeter.
Doing this I discovered the flex panel is working great - producing 19.5 volts 11am - 1pm. Plugging my portable into roof connector gave me an instant 14.5 volts at the solar panel side of the controller. I deduced the "female" part of the SAE connector attached to the panel was not working all the time.
More emailing with Harv resulted in taking out the connector, soldering the two cables together and running them through a small junction box see pics.
If you decide to change out your roof connector,
1. I budgeted 1-2 hours for this job and it took 3
2. Slowest part is unscrewing the sheet metal screws as they are covered with white caulk
3. I used a box cutter to scrape off enough caulk to get my 1/4" socket onto the screw head
4. Mark the positive wires with red tape and do one wire at a time
5. Cut the wires close to the roof connector as there is not a lot of extra in the roof
6 Cover the panel with a blanket to lower the voltage
7 put shrink tube over the soldered part
8. I used one screw to anchor the junction box
9. Tub and tile caulk to seal the bottom
The parts can be bought through Amazon see links,
Junction box
Cable Mounting
You will need to drill 3 holes in the Junction box. Two half inch on two sides and one 1" in the bottom. I used a drill press to get a clean hole.
Finished job looks good and I got rid of the wires that were sticking up in the air.