Awning dissassembly

[waynefi]

I managed to sideswipe a tree while pulling out of my driveway and bend up my awning. I had to remove the awning to be able to move the trailer at all. The awning itself is not damaged, but the control arms are bent.

Now I need to take the whole thing into the dealer for repair. The easiest way will be to take the control arms off of the roller, but the dealer’s tech warned me that I need to put in some cotter pins so the awning won’t try to unroll Looking at the assembly, I’m not sure what he means. Remove the screw on one end, put in a pin, then do the same on the other end?

The awning is a Lippert Solera electric awning.

[waynefi]

I disconnected the control arms, and I didn’t hear any springy sounds, so I guess there was no problem.

[schlep1967]

The gas struts are what pulls your awning tight. The motor just rolls the awning up.
Now if you look at slide awnings, they have springs and they have the holes to pin to keep them from unrolling when disconnected. Basically the slide motor is what unrolls them but the internal spring keeps them tight.

If you ever owned an older trailer that had the manual awning you had to flip a catch on the roller arm to allow you to pull it out. You then had to hold onto the strap when you flipped that catch again to roll it back up. That one had an internal spring.

[waynefi]

This is getting really confusing. There are several “my RvWorks” YouTube videos where he does need to pin the roll on an electric awning, but it doesn’t look like the model I have.On the Solera video, they never disconnected the other end, which is where the spring would be if there is one.

On the my RV works videos, he pins the spring through a hole that I can’t find on mine.

The gas struts won’t cause me problems because I have that part of the arm completely disconnected, so I can stick it in the back of the truck with it half open.

[schlep1967]

See the video Solera awning repair
Your biggest worry is the gas struts on the arms that push out from the trailer. You will need to secure them.

[opnspaces]

I would call back to the tech and specify that it is an electric awning and se if you still need to pin it. I don't know the Lippert awnings but I wonder if there is even a spring involved.