Awning Replacement - Is this for the average do-it-yourselfer?

[rsalhus]

I finally got around to replacing the 21 ft A&E 8500 Awning fabric and right-side torsion spring assembly on our 2001 Rexhall Vision motorhome and took some pictures along the way.  I already had the awning off of the motorhome (I had to cut the fabric down when we hit some heavy winds coming back from Arizona last March) so I had the roller tube, arms, and rafters down and ready to go.  When removing the awning from the motorhome, I had to remove the leftover fabric from the awning rail and from the roller tube.  (That was actually the hardest part of the whole operation.)

I ordered a few small parts from Mark's RV for the awning arms and rafters (slider and foot assemblies) which were also damaged some by the wind.  The right-side torsion spring assembly, the plastic installation cap, and the awning fabric itself were ordered separately from a dealer on eBay.

PIC 1 shows the new and old endcaps of the right-side torsion spring assembly (note how worn down the cams are on the old one which caused the roller tube to unwind in the heavy winds).  Notice also how they have completely changed the design of the lever lock - the new ones don't have cams and  look to be a much stronger design and shouldn't ever wear down like the old ones did.

PIC 2 shows the plastic installation cap (on the left) which was placed over the roller tube to allow the fabric and the poly rope to slide into the roller tube grooves more easily without rubbing against the sharp edges of the steel roller tube and cutting the fabric.  I strongly recommend using this, it really did its job.  I actually managed to install the fabric onto the roller tube by myself.  To do this, I laid the fabric on the ground flat with the valance poly rope and the fabric poly rope on top.  At first I inserted the poly tapes into their respective grooves and pulled the fabric and valance on to the roller tube by pulling on them.  After pulling the fabric a few inches it got harder to do.  Then I simply pushed on the roller tube while standing on the fabric.  PIC 3 shows the result of this.  PIC 4 shows the roller tube from the opposite side with the valance and fabric poly tape completely inside of the grooves of the roller tube.

For the rest of the installation, I recruited a neighbor to help me.  We riveted the endcaps (which are part of the torsion spring assemblies) onto the roller tube and lifted the roller tube onto the sawhorses which I had placed by the motorhome.  Then we slid the other end of the fabric into the awning rail (from front to back) and pulled it across.  This went much easier than I thought it would.  I set up some scaffolding (two ladders and a long plank) and we marched the roller tube along as we pulled the fabric and poly tape into the awning rail.  PIC 5 shows the fabric attached to the awning rail and the roller tube resting on the sawhorses.  Note that the awning rafters are attached to the motorhome at the top on each side of the awning.

Next, we attached the awning arms at the bottom (quick connects) and inserted the sliding rafters into the arms (one at a time) so the arms would be ready to attach to the roller tube after winding the torsion springs.  Starting with the front torsion spring, we wound the torsion spring the required number of turns (12) and let the lock lever hold the tension.  We didn't have to insert a cotter pin to hold the tension but we did anyway in case we accidentally knocked the lock lever while attaching the awning arm to the roller tube.  Only one small bolt is used to attach the awning arm to the roller tube on each side.  Then we wound the torsion spring on the left-hand side and again held the tension with a cotter pin while we attached the left awning arm to the roller tube. 

PIC 6 shows the awning when we were done.  The awning strap had to be installed in the spare groove in the roller tube and slid  from back to front.  We had to take one turn out of the left-hand torsion spring as it was retracting faster than the right side, and I may have to take another turn out of that side later if it keeps doing that.  Both torsion springs were wound the same number of turns but I'm thinking that the old torsion spring may have been a heavy-duty one while the new one is just a standard one.  That would account for the difference in windings.  I don't think they sell heavy-duty ones any longer for my size of awning.  (I think that's what the dealer told me.)

Total time to install the new awning? About 3 hours, 2 hours with 2 people and one hour by myself.  Is this something that the average do-it-yourselfer can do?  Absolutely, but you will need some help.  Only two of us did ours, but a third person would make it easier.  This was much easier than the Blue Ox baseplate installation I wrote about recently, that's for sure!  And don't worry about the danger of the torsion springs.  If you work slowly and carefully, you won't have a problem.  The cotter pins work great and are easy to insert to hold the tension and a vice grips can be used to do the windings.  But then, I should let you know that the same neighbor and I just replaced the torsion springs in my double garage recently, so this might have seemed easier for us than it actually was. 

Sorry this is so long, but I'm hoping it might help to encourage another newbie (like me) to attempt a project like this.  8)

 

[ArdraF]

Nice job, Rolf.  Looks like there might even have been a little rust in photo 1.  Thanks for following up with a narrative on what you did and accompanying that with photos.  It makes a nice primer for someone else who might want to do it.  By the way, based on watching others working on awnings, I would have said not for the do-it-yourselfer, but you proved it easier than I would have thought.

ArdraF

 

[dirtdr]

thanks for the post. I have been putting off fixing my awning on my old TT. Doesn't sound so bad now.

 

[Tom]

Congratulations Rolf and thanks for the writeup and photos. I'll get it into the library for easy reference by others in the future.

Edit: It's now in the library here. Thanks again Rolf.

 

[rsalhus]

Looks like there might even have been a little rust in photo 1.

Ardra, yes the torsion springs do get a little rusty sitting in the awning roller tube because there are holes in the roller tube endcaps where moisture can get in.  But I don't think the rust affected the spring very much at all.  When I first pulled the torsion spring assembly from the roller tube, I felt that the spring was still plenty strong enough to do its job for many more years.  The rust looks bad but IMHO, would take many more years of rusting before the strength of the spring would be compromised.

I have been putting off fixing my awning on my old TT. Doesn't sound so bad now.

dirtdr, it's not that bad of a project.  The instructions that come with the fabric are pretty good, although I couldn't figure out the proper order to do things from the instructions alone.  I'm glad I didn't install the fabric to the awning rail before the roller tube, that might have been a mistake.

Thanks for the writeup and photos.

Tom, hey, I don't know if that was good enough to put in the library but feel free to do whatever you want with it.  I know that reading a lot of the neat stuff in the RV Forum Library and in the daily posts here certainly has encouraged me to try doing things that I never thought I would be able to pull off.  I guess that's a big thanks to everyone who's posted messages here in the Forum, you're doing us all a very welcomed service!

 

[Jim Dick]

Hi Rolf,

Good job changing the fabric! Yes, two people can do it but it's a lot easier with three. I just helped one of our techs replace an awning at a campground. It's doable but much easier with additonal help. The biggest concern is the tension on the two springs as they can really do some damage if they get loose.

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

Nice job and good advice & photos!  I've replaced torsion springs three times now and removed the fabric once and now feel comfortable doing it, though caution is still the byword. Certainly a reasonably handy DIY person can do it, though it helps immensely if you can first help somebody else to see the technique or have a helper who has at least assisted before. And the helper you mentioned is definitely necessary - nobody should attempt it alone. I'm not saying it can't be done alone, but it is awkward and that also means dangerous.

 

[rsalhus]

Thanks everyone for your comments. 

It seems to me that a lot of people overemphasize the danger of the torsion spring windings in awnings.  Heck, the windings on the right side of our awning roller tube (where the new torsion spring assembly was installed) were actually done by turning the mechanism with one hand without a vice grips. I should also add that the left side windings were noticeably harder than the right side and did require a vice grips (this is because the left side is not ratcheted when wound because there is no lock lever on that side).  So although it is possible to get hurt doing this, I certainly wouldn't let it prevent me from attempting the awning replacement.

I think most of the ballyhoo about the danger of changing these springs is initiated by the manufacturers to protect themselves in the event of a liability suit.  Now the tension on the torsion springs of a garage door that has to lift a 220+ lb door is horse of a different color.  Some places won't even sell garage door torsion springs to a do-it-yourselfer, and in fact, I had to sign a waiver saying I wouldn't sue the seller (if I was injured) for the ones I ended up buying locally and installing in our garage.

So my point is that you shouldn't necessarily shy away from replacing an awning because of worrying over the tension of the torsion spring windings.  It simply ended up not being a big issue.  Of course, you do have to turn the windings in the right direction the proper number of turns (good directions are included for that) and you do have to tighten one bolt tight enough to secure the mechanism to the awning arm (not hard at all either) to do it right. 

I'm now very seriously considering a lock mechanism to keep the awning roller tube from unwinding while driving the motorhome through strong winds.  I've seen a couple of them talked about here on the Forum and think I will either order one or fabricate one so I won't have to do this awning replacement thing again next year. 

 

[KodiakRV]

...I'm now very seriously considering a lock mechanism to keep the awning roller tube from unwinding while driving the motorhome through strong winds.  I've seen a couple of them talked about here on the Forum and think I will either order one or fabricate one so I won't have to do this awning replacement thing again next year. 
...

Doesn't the mechanism controlled by the lever at the top left of Picture 1 lock the roller so that it won't unwind when the awning is stowed?

 

[Jim Dick]

rsalhus,

It's not all ballyhou. I worked for a guy that tried to change a garage door spring by himself. It almost tore his hand off when he slipped. Yes, it can be done but someone not experienced with spring tensions, such as on a garage door opener, can easily get hurt. Awnings are not as dangerous but one slip and you can lose a few teeth if your face is too close to the vice grips! I think we all need to remember that not all RVers are experienced in this sort of undertaking. I'd hate to tell someone it's a piece of cake only to have them seriously injured.

 

[rsalhus]

Doesn't the mechanism controlled by the lever at the top left of Picture 1 lock the roller so that it won't unwind when the awning is stowed?

Yes, it is supposed to do just that.  But there is no awning lock lever in the world (from what I was told by a mechanic at Camping World) that can hold back the awesome power of the wind.  Seriously, if you have an older lock lever design like our old one shown in PIC 1, the wind can easily unroll the awning roller tube even when the lock lever is in the locked position.  My old one had severely worn down cams so it didn't take much wind to unroll the awning roller tube even when locked.  The new one (also shown on PIC 1) seem to have an inherently better design.  But I can't tell you how well the new one will hold up to a strong wind because it hasn't been tested yet, at least by me.  Maybe someone else will chime in with their experience with the newly designed one.

One way of telling which design you have on your awning might be by listening to the sound of the awning lock lever when you move it.  If you hear and feel a definite loud 'click' when you move it either way, you might have the new design.  My old one, although worn down badly, would not 'click' when moving the lever.  Maybe that was a clue that it was worn down, I'm not sure as it was that way when we purchased the motorhome in September of 2005. 

So an awning lock, I think, is good insurance and probably worth the investment.

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

I've seen an awning torsion spring break loose when the retaining cotter pin sheared off (yes,the spring is strong enough to do that!) and it indeed has the capacity for bodily harm if a hand or wrist got in the way. I don't know how you wound the torsion spring without vise grips or some kind of lever (like the awning arm itself) and now wonder if it may have been slipping.  That might be why you had to reduce the tension on the left side to match.

But you are right - any reasonably capable DIYer can handle the spring thing. It is something to be cautious of, but once warned it is not a huge problem to deal with. Unwarned, however, those who have not worked with big springs before could easily get waylaid by it, so the warnings are (in my opinion) quite appropriate. Besides, I have seen people who THINK they know what they are doing do some incredibly stupid and dangerous things.

 

[rsalhus]

Gary,

Yeah, I didn't mean to minimize the amount of damage that can be done to a hand or an eye by an awning torsion spring if a vice grips slips off or something.  I watched a video on the Internet showing where to position the ladder (for replacing garage door torsion springs) and how to keep your body and arms away from the path of the winding tools should they slip off.  Caution is indeed warranted, but it doesn't do any good to instill a deep sense of morbid fear in this either.

As for turning the right hand torsion spring by hand, we could hear it ratcheting each step of the way and we counted each revolution of the mechanism as we wound it so the only place that it could have slipped is inside of the roller tube.  And I think we would have felt that or at least heard it.  Again, I think that the one torsion spring assembly on the left side that we did not replace, might have been a heavy-duty one while the new one was a standard one.  I just looked it up now, and the heavy-duty one takes 8 turns while the standard one takes 12 turns.  So I may actually have now 3 extra turns on the left side torsion spring which explains why it was harder to turn than the right side.