Leg bottom connection

[nrgtrakr]

My word choice is likely off, but where is the correct place to connect the bottom of the awning leg?

These two photos are the bottom of the front leg of the curb side awning, it's not secure.

[nrgtrakr]

This is the bottom of the rear leg.

Comments?

[perryg114]

Usually the bracket is higher up on a vertical rib where the straight section meets the curved section. You could put it at the belly line but why mess up the trim. I don't know what brand of awning that is. It does not look like it was installed correctly. The is no structure at all below the belly line. There is just thin sheet metal.

Perry

[nrgtrakr]

Thanks!

The rear one is solid, the front one flops.

Besides lousy anchoring of the front leg the only thing I know about the awning is the fabric is toast and needs replacing. I don't even know what make it is.

So I thought I'd first see if it could be anchored correctly and in the process figure out what make it is, all before buying new cloth.

Following rivets for rib lines ... simpler than white boxes or houses.

[nrgtrakr]

So this all begs the follow on question ...

How can you tell who made the awning stuck on your used rig?

[perryg114]

Look in some RV magazines. I think there is ZipDee which it is not, Carefree, and Dometic that I know of.

Perry

[Belegedhel]

It is a little bit hard to tell what brand it is from the pictures posted so far. Maybe some from further back would help. My guess is that it is not a Zip-Dee or an A&E, so perhaps it is a Carefree, or maybe the lower mounting brackets are some kind of kludge created by the PO.

Typically the Carefree/A&E awnings are mounted with some long lag bolts. They usually try to make the lower mounting point go right through the belt line because the C-channel is behind that. That is not only as solid a place as you will find on the trailer, there is also more metal there than just about anywhere. Your front lower mount may be just a matter of the screws getting loose or maybe they have wallered out the holes and need to be replaced with something bigger. The rear lower mount is, without a doubt, too low. Not only is there no rib or channel behind where it is mounted, but it is bolted into a portion of the bellywrap that is only fastened to the main shell with a few pop rivets under the beltline trim.

The mounting of awnings on some of these vintage trailers is always interesting/creative. My trailer had the rear lower mount right in the middle of the battery access door, so that you had to disconnect the awning arm before you could open the door. What a mess.

[nrgtrakr]

Thanks!

I figured out it's a Carefree and found the installation instructions online for boxes and ASs.

For the front bottom mount someone made an interesting attempt at cosmetic surgery to fix both a dent in the bottom of the front banana peel as well as some unknown force breaking the bottom front corner weld on the door frame and the subsequent misalignment of the door frame and inserted a too thin to be useful plate behind the 4 corners junction - not into the subfloor.

The rear bottom mount is attached to the door frame for the battery on one side, the other side may have a plate inserted like the front.

After a redo on the cosmetic surgery I'll attempt hitting the verticle rib since the bottom C channel seems to be missing in that area.