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My toy hauler has a solar panel that does a great job of keeping the two 6 volt trailer batteries well charged. Now I need to figure out something for the ATV batteries. I have the OEM battery that came with my Polaris Ranger 900 and then a secondary battery that is a Odyssey PC925L connected through an isolator (that I can completely turn off).
I kind of doubt that I can tap into the trailer's solar panel, but if I could that would probably be the cleanest solution. Otherwise, I would like to find a second solar powered battery charger that I can use specifically for the ATV.
Solar panels with controllers have been in use forever. They will not trash your battery. If you tap your existing panel and try to charge dissimilar batteries it would not work well unless you added a selector switch so you could choose what you were charging when.
Does anyone have experience with a product like that? I don't want to end up with something that trashes my battery.
I nave two solar powered battery tenders hanging in my carport. I put one on each car when we may be gone for a while. Mine work great! They are not even in direct sunlight, and there is enough ambient light to maintain the batteries.
I installed the Solar charger today. I didn't attach it to the RV trailer. I thought about putting it up top, attached to the roof rack, but I didn't have the right set of fasteners. Plus, I'm not sure how well it would do at highway speeds. My ATV trailer is sitting behind my toy hauler, so I laid the solar panel on the ATV trailer and fastened it down with zip ties. I checked the voltage at the ATV battery and it was charging good.
One less thing to worry about. Sort of. Now I need to periodically check the ATV battery's water level.
How has the 5W Battery Tender solar charger been doing with your ATV batteries? I don't really want to plug my trailer into the outlets at the storage lot and have been thinking about a solar charger. It'd catch the morning sun until about 1 PM everyday. Do you think it'd be possible to fashion a way to lock it to a pin-box? (hard to tell from the photos).
My solar battery charger/tender has been working very well. I have an isolator between the two ATV batteries so the secondary battery doesn't get charged until the main is fully charged. As long as there is plenty of sun both batteries are fully charged.
I built a frame to hold the solar panel. It "attaches" to the back of the trailer on the steel cargo door using really strong magnets. This keeps it from going anywhere. Anyone could walk off with it but it hasn't moved, either from wind, snow or people.
I’m glad to hear it is working well. The price seems reasonable. I really like the magnetic attachment idea. That would probably be ideal for me as well up on the pin-box. Thanks.
Very nice! You gave yourself lots of angle adjustment range there. I'm really loving this magnetic attachment plan. I think I'll use an adapter and plug it into the built-in Furrion connection point (which is right up front). Everything is falling into place. I'm pretty enthusiastic about this project now. Thank you!
I got it installed this morning. I used simple angle-tie pieces from Home Depot at each corner to hug the pin-box (got really lucky on the dimensions). I added a Furrion adapter to an extension cable so I could just plug it into the Furrion port up front. It is pretty inconspicuous so hopefully it won't walk off. The angle isn't 100% ideal but I think it will be good enough for my purposes.
12-23-2016, 11:48 PM
