Go Power 120w Portable Solar Panel

I bought a 560 last summer and I was planning on doing some dry camping at some point. The fellow that sold it to me tossed in a solar panel (Go Power) and Cary let me know I was missing a peice to plug it in (Marinco ConnectPro 12VBP) which I got. For the life of me I still can't figure out how to get it all to work. Does anyone else have one of these Go Power Solar Panels and did you use the Marinco ConnectPro to "plug in" your solar panel?

 

Ken, I uploaded some pics to this post of what I'm working with. Several plugs that don't plug into the teardrop directly, but this Marinco plug does. However, nothing will plug into the Marinco product. Thanks for your input! I was just up in WI getting a roof rack put on, so it'll be a while until we get up there again (from TX). If I can't get this to work, we'll have to stay with state parks and such. It'd be great to get what we have working, though.

 

Looking over the manual again and reading this post...it's starting to make sense. Appreciate it!

 

Guys, I took off the protective waterproof cover to get the wiring taken care of and see in the manual (pg 28) that the insert arrow and the small triangle on the female connector line up with each other. I didn't take note as to which Pin the arrow was pointing to, though (I wouldn't cut it as an engineer). I uploaded the pdf from Marinco's website with the insert arrow. Any thoughts on which Pin should be on top (or which Pin the insert arrow should be pointing to)?

 

Are you using a solar charge controller in the trailer or on the solar panel? This makes a difference on which pin (2 or 3) that you wire to in the connector. From the marinco pictures, I would assume that the cover goes on so the the arrow is oriented over the negative pin (#1). The cover and plug should have flats that need to line up.

If it were me, I would get a multi-meter and confirm on the trailer which pins are positive and negative. Then I would insert the plug in the right orientation, then slide the cover on so that the arrow lines up or mark the plug where the arrow should be. The positive wire will need to be on either pin 2 or 3 depending on where your solar controller is located.

I am assuming that the little triangle on the receptacle is the negative wire ( I have a 2 prong plug on my trailer, so cannot confirm how the 3 prong is wired).

 

I finally got around to this and got it figured out with Cary's help and thought I'd post it for anyone else with similar challenges. My solar panel has a controller on it and he said we can't feed one controller into another, so I followed instructions in the manual for if my panel has a controller and got it wired up per the instructions in the manual (pg 28 in my manual). Here was an email from Cary:

You cannot feed one controller into another. If you plan to use a solar panel with a built in control then you need to bypass the solar controller built into the camper. The third pin basically goes straight to the battery positive post instead of the solar controller.

I also took Henry's advice and got a multi-meter to have more confidence I was hooking it up right.

Thanks again for everyone's input!

 

I also took Henry's advice and got a multi-meter to have more confidence I was hooking it up right.

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Doug and Angela. Not all multimeters are created equal. For the panel and anything 12V with the trailer, you'll want one that can measure DC current, and not just voltage. A clamp style meter works best. Such as this... Clamp Meter

Many meters omit this functionality which is crucial for diagnosing automotive wiring issues.

Steve