Awning spring tension
Yesterday, I undertook the challenge of replacing the fabric on my A&E 15' manually operated awning. I watched a couple of Youtube videos and lined up a couple of friends to help and had at it. All was going well until the steel rod I inserted in the rear cap to keep it from unwinding broke. This caused the rear spring to unload its tension all at once. I continued with the fabric replacement which went pretty easy. When I unwound the front spring there were about 8 turns required to release the tension so after reattaching the caps I preloaded the springs with 9 turns and reattached the awning tube and fabric to the RV. It's a 2006 Cardinal 31RKLE. When I tried to extend the awning the was barely any tension on it and it almost fell into the extended position. I had to roll it up manually as there wasn't enough spring tension to roll up as it usually did. I got back up on the ladder and added 3 more revolutions to the front and rear springs. Now I have a total of 12 revolutions in each spring. When I extended the awning again there didn't seem to be change in the way it unrolled or rolled back up. I had to manually roll it up again. So, I got back on the ladder and added 3 more revolutions for a total of 15. This time it seemed to operate a bit better but I still had to assist the rollup. I guess my main question is how many revolutions does it normally take to preload the springs in the tube? Especially since the rear spring had an uncontrolled release of tension. I hope I've explained this well enough for some help from all of you. Thanks, Randy.
|