We have a 2007 38 PDQ Diplomat. Found a bunch of good stuff on this forum for mods/fixes. Looked for Solar but did not find a great match so I figured I would share what I learned.
I think most Monaco's are made about the same as far as this mod goes so it should work for most in this forum.
Ours came with a single solar panel. At first wanted to use the stock wires and just increase the number/size of panels. Wanted more solar for our dry camping (95% or our use).
Running wires is the bulk of the work. After studying for some time found a great path for new/bigger roof wires (8 AWG). This allowed us to leave the stock panel/wires (10 AWG) un-touched.
Pictures are from Droid Razr (low quality) and I will go thru them fast (at work....) but those that are handy will have no trouble. Great satisfaction from this project!
Pull wires from black tank connection up to bathroom - start by pushing pull-wire down from bathroom cabinet (above/behind toilet) to black tank, then attach wires and pull them up from black tank into bath cabinet behind/above toilet. Note - There is a small black panel on the upper right of dump area panel. Pull this panel and you will see the vent pipe connection to black water tank.
You need a wire puller but may be able to get away with just a stiff piece of wire. From bathroom cabinet you can just push wires up thru roof.
Put the shelves back in cabinet last. This is a good slack wire take-up area.
From the black water vent pipe, you can push across the coach to battery side easy. When on battery side of coach, drill the plastic and metal wall to allow routing back to battery box (routing along frame rail). Note CAT5 wires to Tri-Metric monitor are routed in the same drilled hole and go up into kitchen cabinet. To get into kitchen cabinets run CAT5 from battery box along frame rail to the access panel pictured above. Just to the right of pictured area you will see the expanding foam and wires coming down from factory kitchen wire work. The wires will enter just next to the slide (good to not need moving wires).
In battery box, you can make connections to monitor (I used the Bogart Tri-Metric, very cool!) and pass roof wires thru to next compartment (look close at pics and you will see roof wire coming down and moving thru to next compartment)
Wires from panels actually go past battery box (you can see them next to CAT5, they are 8 awg black wires) to the inverter box.
On top of the coach, I folded my own brackets (2.5" wide, 2" legs). Panels are wired in series for lower current=lower loss in wires. Note the series wiring can only be done with MPPT or eqiv controllers.
Here is a close up of the entry from roof. Note wires are above roof surface (less likely to leak). Drilled holes only big enough to allow wires to pass and silicone from both sides.
Note wires are next to black water vent pipe, not IN black water vent pipe.
I noted after install that I can run the old (power pig) 32" Sharp TV, Dish tuner, lights AND still push 5 amps into the batteries. Note this was done in late June, WA state with some clouds. Cool to watch the monitor when the clouds come over! +5 amps turn to -15 amps in a hurry!
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