Time for a new awning – Dec. ’19
I had had it after 3 years of battling with the A&E awning. The entire device is a piece of crap in my opinion. I probably wouldn’t have thought that if I hadn’t owned a Colorado awning on my very first RV. Sure, the Colorado did need some minor repairs now and again but not like this A&E did. AND the mechanism is just crap. The mechanism is built into the tube assembly where the awning is rolled up when stored. With an A&E you unlatch the mechanism and pull the pull strap in order to deploy the awning. So there’s the stored position, and the deployed position. With an A&E, since the latch release is 8 feet off the ground, you have to grab a 4 foot long hook (that comes with the awning when you buy it) for unlatching it whenever the wind blows or you want to retract. And it wasn’t always easily accessible even with the hook. Hated it. Loved the Colorado design because they had a lower latch system so you didn’t have to grab the hook. It’s a slide mechanism that is built into the awning arm near the RVs door. You just reach up to no more than 5 feet off the ground and operated the latch while holding tension on it with the pull strap, then you could allow it to retract. Easily within reach in nearly all circumstances.
So, when I was in Parker Dam in Nov-Dec 2019 I called the mobile awning repair company I’d dealt with several years before. Back than, had them come out and repaired the wind up spring inside the awning which wouldn’t hold onto the cone it’s attached to by friction any more. The repairs I’d done in the past had worked well for me but I’d worn out the spring cone. I’d used Gorilla Glue to fix it and that lasted for a few years. The new spring assembly they put in worked great, the price was right, they did exactly what they said I’d need, so I wasn’t worried about giving them my business.
But after the quote I got from them for replacing the fabric in the A&E, I was thinking about it, and also asked for a quote of a complete change over from the A&E to a Colorado. Yes, it was $300 more, but I hated that A&E so much, it was worth it to me so ordered it. The remote latch/unlatch is a great feature that Colorado has the A&E doesn’t have. And the Carefree brand just seems to be made better, more heavy duty like.
The ShadePro company did the work for me and has been working this area installing awnings for years so I’ve come to trust them quite a bit. Not just from the work they’ve done for me but others I’ve talked to as well.
Anyway, after ordering, they have a warehouse where they build your awning to the width you want, and in my case, they had to take a Colorado manufactured awning with cover and cut it down a few inches to fit in the available space, or something. They don’t always need to do that mind you. The fabric is tough nylon weave, not that plasticized vinyl crap A&E uses. The sewing on the seams was extremely tough as well. Made for outdoors. Not likely I’ll get another seam tear with this one like I did with the A&E…(see below).
And here’s some pictures of the tech as he installed it after they got the fabric all sewed up for me. They manufacture their own fabric, and buy the metal assembly with cover from Colorado. I might not have all the facts straight.
I did try to help the guy but he seemed to know exactly what he was doing so I mostly stayed out of his way after offering to help. I would have preferred a ‘fade’ type fabric but they sold me on their own fabric as it’s heavier and well made with extra stitching to prevent tears but they don’t offer a ‘fade’ style.
It really seems to be a pretty easy job if you’re interested in doing your own but I didn’t want to mess it up if I did it. Cost was $1300 but that was for an entirely new awning…not just the fabric. It’s been 6 months and I’m very pleased with it.
Awning seam tear – Aug. ’17
This article is about my old A&E awning I’ve since replaced with a Colorado.
For months now, I couldn’t help but notice, as I’d glance out the passenger’s side window, the one behind the travel chair, that the seam near the top of the awning, was strained & the stitching was slowly splitting apart.
Well, the threads finally let go, and now I have to figure out a way to fix it.
Right now, I’m at a RV park where none of my neighbors have ladders. They’re mostly trailer and tent campers. So I’ll have to wait to where I’m at a place I can borrow one and attempt a fix. One potential fix is using Gorilla Tape…which I happen to have a small roll of. Problem is the tape is black. Meanwhile, I’ll query people on RV dot net to see if anyone has a simple, inexpensive fix.
And that ‘simple fix’ turned out to be a special tape. While I was staying at the Burns RV park, in their little store on the shelf was a roll of clear tape with a big ‘RV Awing Repair Tape’ label on it. So I got online and checked on the RV’ing forums I frequent. Sure enough, most posts where owners had torn awnings someone mentioned awning repair tape as the solution. It wasn’t cheap – $15 for the 60′ X 4″ roll, but if it does the job, it’s worth it.
A couple days later, borrowed a ladder from the RV park I was staying at, applied the tape per instructions. It turned out the hardest part was to get the edges of the tear together for taping. Did the best I could up on that rickety ladder.
It didn’t look bad initially. The gap was my doing…had trouble pulling the edges together. But the repair is still working and the tear hasn’t grown any. The tape is strong, a bit thicker than packing tape, incorporates UV protection, and uses water resistant glue. I applied it to at least a foot from the edge along the seam, both top and bottom.
So after 8 months of use, I’d call using specialized tape for a torn awning a success.
I’d really like to get rid of this A&E awning and get a Colorado. This A&E design is just ‘cheap’ and the entire setup was poorly put together at the factory. And that transferred to a poor installation at the Winnebago factory so I always have to push on the front arm before retracting to get it to retract correctly. I prefer the Colorado design to this one. What I’ll do is keep my eyes open for a used Colorado during my travels.
Update: Jun ’18
The awning isn’t getting any better, it now has a short tear on the other end. There’s been a lot of wind here but it’s all been under my 20 MPH limit. If it gets much above 18 MPH or is blustery, I’ll retract the awing. This time I noticed right off when the tear began on the far end and got up there the next morning and put on more of that ‘Awning Repair Tape’ top and bottom of the awning where the tear was. Still had some left over from the other repair in Aug. ’18 so didn’t need to try to buy any.
Then I got to looking and notice that the entire seam seems to be ready to let go. Sigh. So I guess I’ll start looking for a replacement awning. Having had both the Carefree by Colorado and the A&E awnings, I’m a fan of the Carefree. The remote latch/unlatch is a great feature that the A&E doesn’t have. And the Carefree brand just seems to be made better, more heavy duty like. 
If you look along the seam of the awning, you can see light in several places where the seam is letting go. This is a recent development, wasn’t like this a few weeks ago. So I’ll have to consider what I’ll do. A new Carefree awning is $700 and that’s if I reuse my aluminum cover. But perhaps I can just repair the bent A&E arm, it’s not usable – bent enough that it can’t be extended on the far end of the awning. The drivers end arm is fine though . I’ve been working around it for a couple years now. So I’d need to replace the fabric, and that arm.
If that’s too expensive, I’ll just get a new Carefree awning and be done with it. I like the Carefree better anyway.
Update: April 2019
Tape began to fail…and was releasing in various places on the underside and top of the awning (that I could reach using a ladder) so since the weather was so good, decided to redo the tape job using left over tape from the first & second application. First, I was able to borrow a ladder from the ground crew at Preferred RV Park. Boy was it heavy. But they delivered and picked up when I was done with it so…Once on the ladder, it was pretty easy to just pull on the hanging tape to remove it. Then I used water and Dawn to clean the sections where it had been, plus a little further on. That wasn’t too hard as the tape had dried and fell off so there wasn’t any sticky tape residue. Once that was done and allowed to dry, took a clean rag and alcohol and whipped down everything both where the tape had been and the new areas I decided to add tape.
Once that was dry, then I reapplied tape pretty much exactly were I’d put it before…but this time I went a little further along the seams. First towards the rear of the RV from the front where I’d put it originally and then on a new section in the middle and near the end where I could see daylight through the seam when I couldn’t before. Up on top of the seam, and using the ladder, I applied the tape as far as I could reach.
New this time was I added tape on the edge seam of the leading edge (the edge near the front of the awning going at a right angle to the RV) of the awning for the first time because it looked to me like the seam is separating there too. I put on that section using 1/2 the tape width on top, and folded it under so the bottom was covered too. Kind of a maintenance only move on my part. Might not ever need it but I feel better with it there.
The cleaning, re-taping, and new taping didn’t take much more than an hour. And I still have some of that excellent awning repair tape left. Kind of think I got the $15 I paid out of it so far. So all-in-all I’m pretty happy I got it done when the weather was so good. Rather than letting it get worse and tear apart when I needed the awning the most…mid-summer.
Adding an awning pull cord – Feb. 2016
During my travels over the years with my 18 foot Colorado awning, I quickly found out that there is one addition to an awning that owners should attach immediately on purchase. And that’s a pull cord. Here’s a picture of mine. The addition is that white nylon pull cord that attaches to the black strap provided by the awning manufacturer. (The wooden structure in the window is a reflection).
What I’ve had happen before adding that pull cord, during a windstorm when I need to quickly retract the awning, is sometimes the black nylon pull strap that comes with awnings is nearly impossible to grab with the hook as it’s wildly whipping around, or it’s wrapped itself around something up on the roof or an awning arm assembly. I’m generally too short to reach it and unwind it as most humans aren’t 8 feet tall. Other times, I’ve arrived at an RV park and can’t find the strap because it’s up out of reach on top of the roof. And a couple times, it’s gotten wrapped up inside the awning as I retracted it in a windstorm and lost hold of it. And those cases it takes a ladder and two people to get it un-trapped. So this is my solution.
What I do is double a length of the small diameter (1/8th inch) nylon cord found in packages at Home Depot and tie it to the pull strap that people often just use their awning hook for. This prevents the pull strap from getting lost inside the awning during retraction, or lost for the other reasons mentioned and not easily reached without a ladder…which I don’t carry. Who wants to climb a ladder in the wind anyway.
Than I use a small bungee cord to attach it to the conveniently located hole in the base of the awning arm. Yes, while driving if the wind is from the right direction the strap and cord can slap the side of the RV, but it’s never harmed the paint, and it isn’t all that noisy. After hundreds of operations using the pull cord for both extending and retracting the awning, and remembering what troubles happened when I didn’t use one, I wouldn’t be without this little hack. The pull cord should come with new awnings.
June ’17 – Awning strap broken
One morning I start to deploy the awning using the pull strap and damned if it didn’t finally rip off the end piece that is inside the roller tube slot. It had been showing signs it was going to tear for months already so it wasn’t a big surprise. The problem was that it was just around a year old and I didn’t want to replace it with another one that would only get another year. Meanwhile, I was pleased that it decided to break while I was opening the awning not closing it. It would have rolled up inside the awning and been a bear to get back out. But I have a heavy duty staple gun so I used that to reattach the end of the awning strap back onto the capture rod…a small plastic rod that fits inside the slot in the awning. Looped the torn end over around the plastic rod, and stapled. There’s a lot of force applied to the strap occasionally so I didn’t think that repair would last long. But felt it would last long enough to order a new strap. Pictured below. I had bought two replacement straps a year ago, but I’d used them both. One on the old Bounder before it was sold, and one on this rig shortly after I’d bought it as they were both looking like it was time to replace them. This time I was going to get the best, highest quality strap I could find, because a single year isn’t quite enough in my book.
So I went online onto Amazon, and checked what they have. And here’s what I got for $11, a 93″ strap. It’s a Carefree brand so pretty good reputation, and has heavy stitching at the seams. Looks better than the one I’m replacing. The others I could find online might have been less expensive, but the pictures didn’t show much in the way of heavy duty stitching.
Here’s a picture before installation, with the strap all ready to replace my broken strap. I will hang onto the repaired strap as a backup in case this one breaks or gets damaged. Installation is a breeze. First make sure the awning is fully unwound but not extended (not raised). This is to ensure you can reach the slot from the ground. Using an awl or screwdriver, just push the plastic rod along the slot in the roller towards the rear of the RV, assuming you’re changing the strap in the awning on the passenger’s side. On the far end of the awning, you have to tease it out of the slot a bit but it comes out easily enough, you might need some help rolling the tube an inch this way or that into the right position, but just be sure you don’t let it wind up.
After the old strap rod is out, just push the new strap rod in the slot, and away you go. Easy. No reason to pay a shop $125/hour for that little job. But…it’s a different story if the end of the broken strap has rolled up inside the awning. In that case you’ll need a ladder and probably some help to roll it open all the way to access the strap and the tube slot. And it might be worth paying a shop to do it depending on your physical condition. However, it’s likely that someone in the RV park would be happy to help. So give it a shot. And remember to add the nylon cord extension I recommended above to the end of the new strap.