Newbie here- Question about Sharp 80w PV panel

Hi all. Nice forum here.

I was on a hunting trip this past Monday, and my buddy's truck battery went dead. Well we got the truck jump started. He was going to let it run for a bit, but I offered/decided to use my 80w Sharp PV panel to try to charge the battery while we went hunting that afternoon.

Big mistake. :(

The instant I hooked up the panel to his battery, it sparked, and my panel started smoking from the junction box. I was careful to hook it up with the correct polarity, so i'm not sure why it did that, but anyway it happened. After that, my panel wouldn't charge anything. Luckily, we were leaving on Tuesday, so the batteries in my trailer got us through the rest of the trip without needing any more juice.

When I got the panel home, I took it apart and noticed the diode on the negative side was melted. I saw a place where you could order new diodes, but are they really necessary? I use the panel with an ICP CC20 charge controller to charge my GC-2 batteries that power my tent trailer. I only use the one panel.

Any harm in just leaving the diodes out of the junction box? I cut them out and snipped the bridging wire and the panel currently puts out 4.3 amps (tested it on the trailer today).

Thanks for any advice/help.

Matt