I have a 2016 25' International FBT. I am posting this to assist a future Zip Dee awning owner attempting to close their malfunctioning powered awning. Hopefully they will find this post before attempting the seriously flawed procedure in the Zip Dee manual.
My awning was in the open position during a power disconnection. When repowered the CLOSE button opened the awing further and all the other buttons did nothing. My awning extended so far beyond normal that it was hard to open the Airstream door.
The Zip Dee awning controller resets itself in the fully closed position. The problem is how to get the awning closed so this can happen. As I am an engineer, I opened my Zip Dee manual to page 13 and began to follow the "Emergency Manual Operation" procedure. This made me very very sad.
The manual procedure may work under certain fault circumstances but NOT if the awning spring is still wound. In that case you really do not want to remove the motor head bolt after disconnecting the gas rafters as the procedure indicates. The bolt is very hard to remove against the tension of the roller spring. Once out the awning will fly closed and if you are unlucky the motor side arm will fall off the awning shaft and crash to the ground. In order to reassemble the awning in this state you now need two people, two eight foot step ladders, and an understanding of how the system actually works which the Zip Dee manual does not provide.
The following procedure is vastly simpler than the one in the manual and was suggested to me today by the Zip Dee people. Based on my hard won knowledge of how the awning and controller function it would have worked in my case.
1. Turn off power to the control board. An easy method would be to disconnect shore power and put the batteries in store mode. You could also disconnect shore power and disconnect the batteries in the battery box. It depends on what happens in store mode on your trailer. There are a bazillon posts on this subject.
2. Unplug the motor wire from front arm to the motor located behind the head casting.
3. Retract the square steel main arm bars using the flexible emergency hex drive tool attached to the shaft located at the bottom of each bar. Close them to the scribe mark which is the position the arms are in when the awning is fully closed.
4. Attach the plug from the motor to the emergency power cable. Connect the alligator clips to a
12v battery. If you have not displeased the Zip Dee gods and the motor has not failed or jammed the awning will roll up to the fully closed position. If it begins to open then reverse the polarity of the battery connection.
5. Disconnect the emergency power cable and reconnect the motor wire.
6. Restore power to the controller board and push the CLOSE button.
7. If the Zip Dee gods are very happy with you the controller will reset and the awning will now work as normal. If it does not you can at least repeat the above to close the awning again and deal with the problem at home.
To avoid this mess completely, do NOT disconnect power to the awning controller when it is in the open position. Further, as many have stated, always push the close button and let the awning finish resetting before you open it.
Linear Mode
