Community Forums

chiefdave · 04-11-2010, 06:32 AM

Bob, You can have 2 people grip the awning on each side near the front and pull towards the coach and let it go. Pull it about 4 inches and release. It should retract. The other recommendation is to remove the front cover and manually role the awning out completely, then hold the material and allow it to retract slowly. One of these should work.

Dick1142 · 05-05-2010, 03:17 PM

I also found this post very helpful. Remove one screw in the end cap, cut one slot to match the slot in the rail, and the cover slides right out. Went in equally easy. Wife did some repairs, and we saved a bundle. Took about 1 hour total.

brrving · 05-06-2010, 11:55 AM

Very helpful post. Thank you!

Sixpack98 · 05-11-2010, 06:46 PM

Don,
Great post. I'm a little (maybe more) left brained today and confused about how to remove the fabric from the slide. Can you help this old man out???

Dutch Star Don · 05-11-2010, 08:41 PM

Mark...The fabric is held in place on the side of the coach with two small phillips screws that run through the drip rail and keep it from walking either direcrtion. Remove these two screws. On a small slide on the driver's side, the material will need to slide to the rear of the coach. If you undue the one 7/16" bolt at the rear of the slide roller and move it over an inch and place a screwdriver into the center hole of the bracket and into one of the roller slots (there are four slots, three are empty and one has the fabric in it). Now you can just slide the material straight out.

The large driver front slide you can use the dremel as I explained on the front edge of the roller. You can actually do the dremel trick on any of the slide rollers. Just cut the slot on the side where you can pull the material out of the awning rail (passenger slide front = slot at front of roller, passenger slide rear = slot at rear of roller and slide back). I hope this helps.

ON1PC5 · 05-12-2010, 03:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diplomat Don

I've been waiting for an opportunity to either repair or replace my slide topper material on all three slides. The toppers are tearing, at both edges, where they come out from under the cover when the slides are in.

I priced them in Quartzsite and the cost for three fabric toppers was $780.00 plus $300.00 for installation. I thought this was a little steep. Since the only portion that was going bad was the part exposed to the sun, I thought I could remove the material, cut off 6" and restitch the bead back in.

I decided to take off the material on the left rear slide because it was the smallest. Here's what I did......I removed the aluminum cover, 2 phillips head screws on the underside at both ends. It won't fall off when the screws are removed. Just lift it up and off. The two end caps are both held on with phillips head screws. Remove them and set them aside.

I extended the slide which left 2-3 turns of material still on the roller tube. I turned the roller tube by hand until the end of the material was visible. I continued to unroll the tube until the slot with the end of the material was at the top of the roller. Once you have it in that position, you can stick a medium size phillips screwdriver (fits the hole well) into the hole I'm pointing at in the picture. This will lock the roller in position. There are two screws in the motor home awning rail, at both ends, that need to be removed to allow the removal of the material.

The roller tube is bolted to an arm at both ends with a 7/16" bolt. As you face the awning, the left side is always the side that has the tensioner in it. As I did the left rear first, the tensioner was at the front of the awning and the opening in the motor home awning rail was at the rear. This allowed me to remove the rear bolt (no impact on the spring or tensioner) lowered the arm an inch and pulled the material straight out. The problem with doing it this way is that when you do the left front or right side of the coach the tensioner is at the end where you need to slide the material off. This means you have to remove the entire roller tube to get the material out, which was still easy.

I removed the material from both rear slides, ran it over to an upholstery shop and for $60.00 (which I thought was a little high) they cut off 6" and restitched the end. I brought them home and reinstalled both.

Now here's a simpler method that dawned on me when I thought about having to remove the largest roller on my main slide. The tenisoner is at the front and the material has to come forward which would require removing the roller. Instead, I'm going to take a dremel and cut a slice between the top of the arm (in photo above) and the hole at the 12 o'clock postion. All I'll have to do is turn the arm until the material end is at the top of the roller and slide it straight out. This can be done on any of the awnings with no detrimental affect to the arm.

This is a job I've been putting off because I didn't know how hard it would be. Using the dremel will allow me to take the material off on any of the slides in a matter of minutes.

I expect this entire repair will cost me about $120.00. My awning toppers lasted about 45 months. I figure I'll get another 3-4 years out of this repair.

Hope this helps someone who wants to save a little money.

WOW DON
My husband just did our third topper this winter while parked at an RV park in Texas. My husband is way to frugal to pay to have the sewing done, so in the topper comes inside our rig and I bring out my sewing machine and start sewing and cussing!!!!

Probably the only cost we incurred was an $80.00 cleaning bill on my sewing machine.

We never had to cut any material away, just refold and alot of stitching. Maybe he caught ours before it got to bad.

I guess it really pays to have a handy dandy spouse

Sixpack98 · 05-12-2010, 04:03 PM

thanks Don, that helped a lot

AFChap · 06-18-2011, 02:58 PM

I have replaced my topper material twice on both slides. The Carefree roller tubes have a set of locking holes toward the left end of the roller tube.

After opening the slide, I unroll a bit more fabric by hand while looking for one of the two holes on the face of the roller tube near the left end of the tube. I "lock" the roller by putting a pin or screw through one of the holes, then rotating the tube by hand until it drops through the hole in the inner piece. That locks the roller spring in place. Then I remove the bolt through the end of the roller and lift the roller just enough to slide the fabric out of the slot.

The screwdriver through the end will work well, but has to be left there until you put it back together. If you pin the tube via the holes, you can remove the tube or whatever you want/need to do. In the case of my toppers, there is more than just a few inches of fabric left on the roller tubes when the slides are all the way out. Unwinding the spring-loaded roller tube by hand that much would be difficult.

tomckeon · 05-19-2014, 04:44 PM

In the process of repairing the front two toppers now. I was successful at pinning the tube on the first one when I unrolled BUT on the second one according to "Murphy's Law" when I got to the end of the unwinding stage The spring done sprung.........
inside the tube................... I did get it fixed after some time but I need to know what the PRE-Load on the spring might be before I put the fabric back on.
I gave it ten full turns and pinned it assuming 7" circumference and about 35" to coach. 2:1 ??? any ideas out there?