Flexible solar mount on hood: BEWARE!!!!!!!!

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concretejungle

concretejungle

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I'm sick to my stomach to post this, and I assume this is the right location.

I purchased this solar panel kit from a vendor and applied it just as instructed. Seemed like a great idea. It worked very well for me for several years. I never had a dead battery and had a lot of questions about it in parking lots all over the place.

Lately I've been considering selling my 200, so that's been on my mind a little and a friend sent me an instagram story showing someone removing this same setup leaving the paint and hood underneath it completely trashed. It took me about 10 seconds looking at that before panic sat it. Surely mine wasn't like that?!

Wrong!!!! It appears that the panel cooked the clear coat and paint right off my truck.

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I am not surprised as solar panels get really hot. The saving grace is that at least it was just the hood which can be stripped and repainted.
 
I often wonder when I see these hood panels. I have a semi flexible solar panel on an aluminum roof skin and I noticed the back side of panel got really hot and was concerned about the heat destroying any adhesive. I used a piece of 8mm double wall polycarb under thge panel, e6000 adhesive, so far so good.
The heat on the backside of solar panel is severe. semi flexibiles and flat panels have to be mounted to allow cooling, that is why I always wondered about thge hood panels. The rigid panels have a frame that allows some space so they have air gap, the semi flexibiles and flat panels do not have that air gap so mounting is important.
 
concretejungle said:
Wrong!!!! It appears that the panel cooked the clear coat and paint right off my truck.
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Wow! Wonder if underhood temps helped with that. I just bolted mine down to the roof

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sorry to read that! bummer...
but gives you a chance to explore DIY hood painting
 
Sorry that happened to your truck. Thanks for posting this warning. I had no idea solar panels got that hot. No personal experience with any .....yet. The hood is at least a relatively easy repaint. Still not cheap though.
 
peesalot said:
Pig, you ever feel the underside of roof under solar on a sunny day, OUCH. You have some air flow as its not sealed down which may help & a white roof.
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Dude, the underside of the roof gets hot on a sunny day with or without a solar panel. I got a couple layers of stick-on foam insulation inside the roof to help with that.
I don't know how my roof sheet metal got all wavey like that...

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and, unfortunately, being very hot also means that the panels produce less power than if colder...

one way to look at a hood repaint for a situation like that is that if you were fine with an ugly lunk of silicon on your hood, a bit of DIY orange peel shouldn't matter that much, maybe?
 
yes, this past summer I noticed just how hot the panel was and to be honest I really only was thinking I hope that the 3M double sided tape doesn't let loose and the panel fly off! It never did, not even close.

But it sure cooked my paint.

I sent an email to the vendor and warned them that I'm not the only one posting this collateral damage.
 
concretejungle said:
yes, this past summer I noticed just how hot the panel was and to be honest I really only was thinking I hope that the 3M double sided tape doesn't let loose and the panel fly off! It never did, not even close.

But it sure cooked my paint.

I sent an email to the vendor and warned them that I'm not the only one posting this collateral damage.
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Boy that sucks. Thanks for sharing though, so it may help folks like me who had been considering those panels.
 
Don't do it!! LOL

I know that friends with sailboats who run a ton of solar are telling me that they are now mounting their flat mounted panels on a "ribbed piece of plastic" that allows the panel to have airflow under it. I guess that could be something to try, but I'm not going to mount another solar panel to a painted body panel again unless it's a junker.
 
Its available at TAP Plastics among other places. I used 8mm , double wall, polycarb , comes in clear & tinted. IIRC it was like 200 bucks for a sheet, 4 x 8 I think. I used E6000 adhesive to attach panel to poly and poly to roof. 1 on an aluminum roof skin & 1 on my RV which had a white fiberglass roof skin. I had to remove a failed panel and with a wire saw was able to separate the panel from poly. I have never tried removing the poly panels from either roof material but it took some patience to get it off the poly while keeping poly usable. I used a multi tool to cut it.
 
I put flexible panels on the mulgo top on my troopy.

I made a basic frame from aluminum flat bar and attached it to the roof with L-track.

There is a panel of diamond-plate under the panels with a 3/4" gap.

Having L track on the roof and a friend who tig welds aluminum made for a modular heat resistant install.

But it was a lot of work.
 
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