fixed the problem in about 5 minutes. Last week I changed the start battery and to get to it I needed to remove one of the 4-D house batteries. That required removing both the negative wires from the start battery and the 4-D house battery. When I reconnected them I laid down the solar panel sense wire on the start battery instead of the house. I connected a 12 volt light to the paned in various places and it worked fine as long as the regulator was out of the circuit. When I found that out, I figured out the rest in short order. It's usually the most simple fix and if I had thought about removing the battery last week I would have started there. What can I say?