Best path to connect original solar wiring to engine battery?

[Toph1170]

As the title says, I want to connect the original 50 watt roof solar panel to my engine battery. im just not sure of the shortest/easiest path to do so.

As I have both pillars, furniture, seats removed for my electrical lithium/solar upgrade, I figured I would keep the old charge controller and redirect the wires to keep the engine battery topped off. (I will be connecting a new Victron charge controller and ground deployed solar panel to my new lithium coach battery, so the roof solar and controller are not needed for the coach anymore). Anyone do this? Thanks in advance. Christopher.

[noluck]

when i removed mine the original wires went down the pillar and out a hole in the passenger foot well to the underside of the coach, so from there you could go to the battery with a fuse or positive terminal of the fuse box

[caconcourse]

In my 2001 Concourse and I think most models, the coach radio power wires are located in the same area as the original solar controller. For some reason, they powered the radio from two power wires, one from the truck battery (yellow as I recall) and one from the coach batteries (red as I recall). The idea is that a constant low-power source was needed to maintain the radio settings etc, while a high-power source was needed to do all the radio functions.

At any rate, you can connect your old solar controller output to that (yellow?) radio wire to provide a charging input to the truck battery. In my case, I bought a dual-output solar controller and wired the second solar output to that radio wire. (I also re-wired the radio to use the coach batteries for both power inputs). With my dual output solar controller (Go-Power) and additional panels on the roof it charges my lithium batteries and automatically tops off the truck battery.

Note that it acts basically as a trickle charger, so there is no need to use bigger wires.

[Toph1170]

Very helpful! Thank you!

[noluck]

different years are wired different, my 1995 did not have a keep a constant battery voltage for the radio coming from the start battery