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OK, here's one for the electronic minded out there.

Solar panel that I had on the front of the pinz to charge the 12V battery for the ARB cooler is now dead.
All that off road banging around over rocks and such has broken the connection inside the panel. I took it
off and there is so much glue or resin in there that I cannot get to the wires to fix it. Could be as simple as
soldering the connection again but that seems highly unlikely. Not sure.

Can I (successfully) connect the output of my 12V tap on my 24V batteries to the input of my solar controller? Will I blow it
and destroy the thing? I am using the 12V tap to power other 12V things...radio, CB, GPS.

Reason tells me that the 15V-17V input from the solar panel is more than the 12V tap off the batteries
and so it should work but, I hesitate to try something that only my reasoning says should work. Not really good with
amps, volts and such.

Morris

Can I (successfully) connect the output of my 12V tap on my 24V batteries to the input of my solar controller? Will I blow it
and destroy the thing?

No. No. No. No. Well, yes, but just once until the smoke escapes.

Solar panels have a maximum voltage, current, and power. The voltage is high enough to overcharge batteries if connected directly, so most charge controllers prevent the batteries from being overcharged by shorting the solar panel so it makes zero voltage and the battery stops charging (since the panel has a defined maximum current of a few amps, the controller can safely short it out). If you replace the panel with a battery, once the voltage gets high enough the controller will short and now you have a short across a battery with many hundreds of amps of cranking capacity. This should make interesting fireworks.

Just replace the panel! You could put the 12V battery in parallel with the lower truck battery, but the energy that the 12V system battery pulls will eventually result in the lower truck battery getting insufficent charge while the upper battery gets overcharged. It works, but you will be replacing truck batteries more frequently.

Thanks Jim.

Perhaps replacing the panel is a much better move, certainly less expensive in the long run.
Even once is too much for me.

Morris