Center Awning Rafter

This past week the DW and made a trip down to the Camping World in Spartanburg, SC which is only an hour south of us. I purchased one of the Awning Center Rafter supports for our awning. I installed it on Friday. Below are the pix of the installation. It only took about an hour to do the whole job. I'd give it 2 wrenches out of 5.



The top end of the rafter attaches to the side of the coach with 3 #10 sheet metal screws. The support bracket gets liberally coated with clear RTV sealant.



The awning roller gets a 5/16" hole drilled in it to accept the locating pin on the front end of the rafter.



Finally the travel bracket gets screwed to the sidewall of the trailer where the floor joins the wall. Again, clear RTV sealant was used to prevent any water seapage behind the bracket.

Good looking job Mike! I am confused, does the center rafter support the awning when in the stored/travel position?

My last TT had a 21' awning and it had the center support. I must admit I almost never used it. But, yes, it does support the awning when the awning is rolled up. I found that to be the best use for me.

John

AVid wrote:My last TT had a 21' awning and it had the center support. I must admit I almost never used it. But, yes, it does support the awning when the awning is rolled up. I found that to be the best use for me.

John

Very cool...that is a nice feature! My old TT had a 21' awning and it really needed the center support. The Cat has a 17' awning and center support would be nice, but not as much as the old TT.

MaxRock wrote:Good looking job Mike! I am confused, does the center rafter support the awning when in the stored/travel position?

Mark,

If you look closely at the first pix you'll see a rubber cushion kind of looped upwards and below that an aluminum bracket that has a concave curve in it. When the awning is rolled up the aluminum bracket supports of awning and the rubber strip cushions the awning fabric from the metal bracket. It's really quite ingenious and I'm pretty happy with it.

Mike,

Thanks for the additional information. Sounds like a great upgrade!

Looks good. Something we might want to look into.

That would be handy, have to look into it. I'm always afraid of damaging the awning.

scottz wrote:That would be handy, have to look into it. I'm always afraid of damaging the awning.

Scott,

That was my primary reason for doing the upgrade. We can get some high winds comming down our valley here in NC. One of our WorkKampers lost his awning last year to high winds. I've got two de-flappers at each end of the the awning, tie-downs for the roller ends and now the center rafter support. We've had some pretty good winds since I installed it and the awning has hardly moved.