Here I go again.
On a road trip about 6 weeks ago, I heard the solar panels thumping very loudly again. At the time, I attributed it to the headwind we were driving into at the time. The van hasn't been driven much since then, but there's a strong possibility that we're going to be moving to Virginia sometime in the next 4-6 months, and we'll probably drive the SMB. That has us thinking about ways to prevent the thumping. I went up to take a look to see if a Yakima wind deflector would help, but I see the panels are too far forward for me to put a wind deflector on the penthouse in front of the panels, unless I use some rain gutter tower mounts on the metal van roof above the driver's and passenger's seats. Still a possibility.
While looking around, I noticed the edge of the panels toward the rear of the van moved up and down quite a bit. Looking further, it appears that the rear passenger-side solar panel framework that was built to support the panels, and that mounts into the Yakima/Thule roof channel, has actually broken part of the roof rail channel and is now free to move up and down, and correspondingly the panels are now able to significantly flex up and down and thereby loudly thump the penthouse roof.
Here's an earlier pic of the same area (on the driver's side). I don't have any new pics yet, but where the angle iron meets the roof rail, is where the roof rail fractured.
I then went inside and took a look at the Blue Sky controller, and it read just over 6 volts, with no indication of a solar charge. This was at about 4:00pm on sunny day with no shading on the panels.
I really like the new solar panel framework, but it looks like the channels are not strong enough to support the weight and more likely movement of the panels and the frames. Maybe the rear of the solar panel framework need to be mounted into a Yakima roof rail mount which is then inserted into the roof rail channel. I hope there's no permanent damage to my house battery.
I have an e-mail into SMBw regarding this issue, but I hesitantly raise this subject before it's resolved, to encourage other with this same solar panel mounting method the check their roof rails for damage to prevent possible catastrophic damage to their solar panels.
Herb
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