I have two panels mounted on my TD roof. I intend to remove them almost every trip to improve the angle to the sun. The MC4 connectors I have, though all standard MC4, are of different manufacture. Two of them are very difficult to unplug and are in an awkward location on the roof. I'm wondering if I can improve the ease of unplugging by lubing the o-ring on them? MC4s are a great weatherproof plug, however, they are not designed to be repeatedly taken apart.
First I will answer the obvious questions that I'm sure will arise...
Yes, I have the tool to compress the tabs on the MC4 for unplugging. It doesn't help much on two of the four MC4s.
Yes, I know I can change out the MC4s with all the same manufacture MC4s. I don't want to do that at this time.
Yes, I hope to someday change out the roof top plugs to Anderson Powerpoles. As soon as I can find a way to go from two sets of leads to a Y and make it one set going into the camper roof. The SB50 with lugs for 10g wire will not allow two wires into the same lug, thus I have the dilemma of hacking a splice somewhere outside of the plug. That option is not ideal.
Another option would be the 30 amp APPs, but, I don't see any weatherproofing methods for those.
So, back to the subject of this post... has anyone had this problem? What did you do to solve the problem short of replacing all the plugs? Does lubing the o-ring sound like a viable solution? To be clear, I am considering lubing the o-ring, not the electrical connection.
Thanks,
Tim