Camper Awning

Remember this awning? It's a long time since I originally talked about this. Here's the deal with it. It's got electrical leads on it and I've connected 12 volts of that. And no matter what I do, I can't get this to operate with those leads. There is a nut right up here and when I put a nut driver on a cordless drill and I climb upon a ladder, I can get this to open and to close. That's how I got it where it is right now. I can't imagine taking a ladder with me every time we use the camper and using a ladder and a nut driver in order to open and close this thing. So the bottom line is this is gonna go away. We've got a new Lippert from awning or a new awning from Lippert that we're gonna put on. Now I've done some examination here and I have found that when this bolt is out, this part this knuckle will come away from this arm which will be in a vertical position against the camper. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna close this thing and then we'll do some disassembly here and work on getting this awning on its roll slid off the back end of the camper. Sliding off. Slide it off. We're gonna get it to slide off. Here's my story and I'm sticking to it. What I did is I closed this but I left it out a little bit. So what I'm gonna try to do is get this bolt out it's already out on the other end and then go in the middle, lift the whole awning up and like flop it back onto the camper. Then the heavy part, the reel, can sit on the roof of the camper while I'm trying to slide the awning itself out of the track. And the track is just, it's basically just a U-shaped piece of aluminum and there's a rod that's in the fabric of the camper and it's seated into that U. It's more like a C and the C is closed over that rod. So the question will be what it takes to slide that out. Now a couple things. Fun fact, there are cylinders in this arm system and I'm sure that their purpose in life it's, it's right here, is to assist this so that it's easier to get this open and closed and the cordless drill or the electric motor are not doing all the work to make this thing work and or the mission of those cylinders is to push the arm out and knock you off the ladder. So ask me how I knew, the lesson learned is that on the other end when I took this knuckle off the top so therefore it, this vertical was no longer held in place by this knuckle being bolted on, this arm wanted to actuate out, the cylinder was pushing it out. So I've got these cargo straps on here, ratchet straps so that when this is loose, and again the bolt is already out on the other end, that this isn't gonna boom and kick out. So should be able to do this. So that's loose. And then other ladder's already in place in the middle. Every once in a while a plan works. What do you know? Of all the stuff I've run into on this camper, I gotta say I'm very happy that this actually went the way I thought it was gonna go. Now I gotta mess with it and see what's it gonna take to get- I can open the door on the back end of the building here and then can I slide this whole baby up. I had to get reinforcements, Charlie is here to help cuz there's no way I can slide this out by myself. What I did find is that in the track, that C shape, C shape channel, there is a screw going down through that rod I talked about and that was preventing it from sliding. That screw is out and by myself I was able to move it a little. So I don't really know what's gonna happen here but we're hopefully can slide it and then we'll lead prod to that ladder out there in order to finish this I think. Ready? Got it? All right. So definitely a two or more person thing but once we got it sliding, it came out okay. Now I'm just gonna take the screws and the bolts out of those vertical arms and we'll be ready for the new one. The new awning is on and Lippert constructions for this installation are really, really, really good. So follow those. But outline of what happens here, one of the things they recommend is putting a little bit of silicone lubricant into the C channel the awning track that's on the camper. So first thing I did, climb on a ladder and get a little bit of silicone. Careful that it's not running down the side of the camper but shoot some silicone into that track all the way down its lane. Next thing when it comes to putting the awning itself on they recommend that you have the awning or the arms the vertical arms attached to the awning. And then three people. So thankfully Krista and Charlie were available and the way this works is Charlie and I managed the arms. Krista was up on top of the camper and she was helping that piping in the awning feed down that track. Now we got a little bit hung up at the beginning and this track was put on the camper in 1997 so it's got some miles on it, but once we got going, got a little, a little bit of momentum, then it slid right down the length of the track, then went in pretty easy. Now that we're to that point, the rest of the installation here could get wrapped up. Again, their instructions are great. Read the instructions, follow those and your awning will slide on as easily as this one. This is how a motorized awning is supposed to work. Now here's what's happening. Right down here at the bottom of this smart arm is a control panel. All of the awning controls are here on the outside and that'll of course let me open and close just standing right here. This is very cool. Let's get this all the way open and then I'm gonna show you a couple things. So once the awning is open, you gotta think about what's gonna happen next. Do we want shade or is it gonna rain unfortunately? If it's gonna rain then we wanna make sure that rain's got a good chance of running off that's what this is all about. Boop, same on the other end. And with these adjustable pitch arms, you can adjust the pitch. So that's gonna allow rain to run off. Then another cool thing I want to show you. So another addition going on here. This is the front shade installed on the awning. What this is gonna do for you is just what it sounds like. If the sun's coming from that direction, it's gonna give you shade. It also is gonna give you a little protection from the wind blowing. And then two, there's a little visibility thing going on here, little privacy that you can get from this. The way it works is that it's gonna slide into your roller and that component, this upper part, is gonna stay attached to the roller. When you're ready to disassemble, you take the zipper and open that up and then just take off the lower component. So that's gonna roll right up with the rest of your awning. It stakes down to the ground, so that's gonna prevent it from moving when the wind is blowing. And that's really another great addition to the awning. This is so much nicer than what was on here and it was definitely worth making this change.