Retractable curtain on dining roon slide

[Birddog Pilot]

Has anyone ever removed the retractable curtain on the dining room slide behind the passenger chair to retension or rewind the retract spring? Ours has apparently decided to be totally uncooperative and has become a real pain during the slide extension when all the slack material starts bunching up.

I decided it might be better, before I go to through the exercise of removing the thing, to see if it is indeed even possible to rewind the spring much like one often has to do with a typical roll-up window shade.

Last item, there doesn't seem to be a manufacturer's identification tag on it; any ideas on where it might have come from? Obviously HWH would be way too easy to have been WRV's source.

[Wayne R]

I just removed it. Never notice it is gone.

[Charlie L]

I've had trouble with mine several times. You've probably noticed that the role up unit is attached to the actual side and is attached to a mechanism that is similar to a full extension draw slide mechanism. The base of the slide is held onto the inner side of the slide wall by several of those square headed screws. On mine there was a spring attached to the top of the role up mechanism to allow it to move up and down on the draw slid thing. I found that I then had to remove the awning rail that holds the other end of the fabric that is attached to the outer coach wall again with the same type of screws.

The role up mechanism can then be opened up by removing some screws one or two on each end cap of the outer cover. One of the end covers contains the fixed shaft (possible the top, but not sure), while the other just holds the floating part of the shaft. Mine did not have a lot of spring tension but be careful anyway. It was a simple matter of straighten out the fabric if necessary and reassembling the unit, leaving the fixed shaft end until I had put enough turns on the shaft to put tension on the spring to allow it to role up.

Then just reverse the order of removing. One reoccurring problem on mine was that there were not enough screws holding the draw slide mechanism to the wall or they were left loose and the whole thing got loose and cause the fabric to get caught in the slide mechanism and tore the fabric. I just had it cut off and sew a new hem for the part that is held against the coach wall.

[Birddog Pilot]

Fantastic, thanks Charlie, just the information I was looking for. At least now I know the job really is worth the effort to remove the assembly; and a retensioning of the curtain spring is actually possible.

[Birddog Pilot]

Hi Charlie,

Mission accomplished, the slide curtain has been successfully retentioned. All of the hardware was as you described; with the exception of a bunch of "carefully ommited" screws -- thank you WRV, I always wondered where all those slide rattles were coming from.

Thanks again for the helpful information.

[hax]

Dick, does this mean that the BB has one less rattle?

[Birddog Pilot]

Definitely many fewer from this area now. Should have pulled that slide curtain out for the retensioning much earlier -- one of those few "Win-Win" projects.