MCD shades for front windshield +

[Gottahaveit]

Considering getting the MCD shades for our 2006 Coach. I hate the curtains. Anyone with personal experience that had them installed pros and cons ? Or any other thoughts on alternatives ? I know they are pricey however may be worth it.

[garyemunson]

My post from a while back...
https://www.rv.net/forum/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/tid/29541816.cfm

[garyemunson]

We installed a power shade on the windshield (just night shade, not the daytime mesh, too) and manual pulldowns on the driver and passenger window. HUGE difference in comfort and safety. I did the install myself. Not too difficult, just time consuming. Our Winnebago had the 'flap' visors that, unlike car ones, did not swing to the side, rendering them useless when the sun was to the left or right of the coach (or anyplace the visor's small footprint didn't cover). I installed 2 operating switches for the windshield shade, one on each side of the center dash console so both driver and passenger could easily control it. Left the programming switches tucked up by the shade. Programming was a one time set it and forget it operation. What this is for is to set top and bottom travel stops AND down travel with ignition on. That setting keeps you from running it down too far while driving and blocking your view of the road. Gone is the miserable curtain that was the only way to block side intrusion of the sun. I removed it's track, cut two straight sections and used them/it to make a privacy curtain for our front drop down bunk. Now, driving down the road in the morning or afternoon we can lower the shade to just the right place to block the sun, the same with the side shades. We've had our Winne going on 3 years now. Installed the MCDs last season as the rest of the coach already had them on the other windows and we were much more satisfied with them than the pull down honeycomb shades that were on our previous coach. I won't have an RV now with at least the MCDs on the windshield and the two side windows. I often think back of driving down the road holding some tourist brochure with one hand to block the sun from my eyes. Hated that. SO MUCH more relaxing driving now. We use our RV a lot (40K miles in 3 years) so all the shades have had a great deal of use. Over the course of 3 years I've only had to adjust the tension on 2 of them. Very simple. The shades easily unclip from their mounting clips (which hold the very securely, never had one come loose unintentionally) and are easily adjusted once you have the shade in your hands. Roller shades are a very old invention but MCD has really perfected them. At least to us, worth EVERY penny. We have not had the problem mentioned above with the shade 'shaking down'. And this last trip cross country took us on some TERRIBLE roads (I-40)!

[rk911]

they came with our 2016 Suncruiser. two complaints:

- the programming switches were placed on the passenger side while the operating switches (needed in the programming process) were located on the driver’s side. this meant that two people were needed to adjust the programming. i have since moved the programming switches to the drive’s side. keep this in mind if you have them installed.

- we found that as we rolled down America’s roads and highways the night shade would drop a fraction of an inch with each pothole. after one season the night shade was down abt 2-inches so i re-programmed it. same thing happened next season. called MCD and reported the problem. an unpleasant tech answered my call and after hearing my issue replied that he was familiar with that problem. he said that the solution was an upgraded motor which he would send for $200. i declined. i solved the problem by removing one of two rods in the bottom of the shade that are used to keep tension on the curtain as it rises and retracts. the remaining rod was heavy enough to provide the needed tension but reduced the weight of the shade enough so that it did not creep downward after hitting a pothole, crossing RR tracks, etc

beyond those two issues we like the shades just fine. we did add a MagneShade exterior sun shade as the MCD version just wasn’t blocking enough of the sun’s rays when we were parked facing west or south.