RE: [A/S] Repairing awning pull strap

["Perry Joe Scudder" <perryjoe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Christopher,
I replaced the strap on a 1989 34' Airstream my brother in law purchased
last year. We were in Ennis, MT, in a campground there. He called Zip Dee,
and they needed to know the year and color of the awning. They sent a
perfectly matched strap for his awning to the campground. The instillation
instructions were included with the strap. I had to hold the end of the
strap up on the roller in the center and drill two 1/8 inch holes through
the extra layers on the end of the strap and the skin of the roller. I then
used the two pop rivets supplied, with extra big heads on then, to fasten
the strap to the roller. It took all of 10 minutes to do the job. He also
had Zip Dee send him a set of the handles used to extend the arms as you do
the final lift when putting the awning out, and a couple of the little knobs
you release the spring loaded ends of the awning arms that had missing
heads. I installed all the stuff in less than 30 minutes.
I found the awning was very hard to raise and lower, because it was so hard
to extend the aluminum sliding portion of the arms. I tries putting a lite
coating of silicone lube on them, but they were still very hard to slide in
or out. After checking the ware pattern on the sides of the little ribs on
the inside piece, I realized they were bent slightly. The big roller was
also bent slightly, which leads me to guess the previous owner had let the
awning get loaded up with water at some point. I took the arms off and
straightened them, when I put everything back together they worked "slick as
a whistle". The big roller was still bent, but I needed more hands than I
had to work on that problem, so Bill put that on his list of things to be
fixed at the factory this winter. That all took a little longer than 30
minutes, but boy was it worth the effort.

Joe Scudder
WBCCI 8624