Like I said, I took JJ's advice from earlier in the thread to finally solve it for good. I hoped the connect under pressure fittings would do it, and they do help - you get about a 50/50 chance of them working alone. When they don't then you use the pressure relief tool which is the old fittings on the piece of pipe as mentioned. That seems to break the pressure enough to solve it for sure. I decided not to do the needle valve method as I was more concerned that the valve could be left open or get knocked on during use. That method would surely work too.
Both my friend and I were totally unable to connect these fittings by hand previously. Neither of us is small or nor a weakling. The fact that it required more pressure than a bar clamp could provide is good evidence that it isn't us. I'm suite sure the solenoid is not allowing the pressure to release fully, though I don't know why. My guess is that it needs hydraulic pressure/flow to work right, so it just doesn't relieve when off.:confused3: When you apply pressure to the fitting with the bar clamp, it creates pressure in the system that then can be relieved by tripping the solenoid switch. You do that a couple times and it draws together a little bit each time until it finally clicks in (before these changes).
I know the concern with fluid heating up in the hoses in the sun. This is not the issue. All of these tests were done with the tractor in the shed with immediate disconnects/reconnects so there is no sun and no time for anything to really change and build pressure. It has to be the solenoid, I just don't know why. Maybe it is the design, or perhaps it is somehow defective, but it works just fine in use (grapple or plow angle moves like you'd expect). There is no way to connect it up wrong as it is just a pair of input ports and 2 pairs of output ports - one to the curl/dump, and one to the 3rd function. If it was connected wrong, something would either be moving backwards or it just wouldn't work at all.
I'd like to know why, as it is(was) very frustrating, but at least everything is now usable without a fight this way...