replacing patio awning fabric - DIY?

Took two of us to do it, and he knew what he was doing. I was clueless and just did what I was told.

Effy wrote:

2chiefsRus wrote:
Thanks for posting on how it went. Just a thought on the three inch difference - were the sides hemmed? If it was doubled over on the ends to hem, then the difference in width may be to allow the doubled over part to be rolled away up in a wider area. If you have doubled over fabric for the entire piece, that can be too bulky to fit on the roll. Might not be it, but thought I would throw it out there.

Hmm, good point. Hadn't thought of that. But without pulling it in, it would "over" roll onto the end caps and cause too much tension to allow the arms to completely stow away. Putting a tiny bit of slack in the top cured the issue. I am by no means an awning guy. Perhaps there is a trick to fine tuning it I am not aware of. But what I did works so rather than fuss with it anymore I may just leave it well enough alone.

Did you put the wider end up next to the RV or did you put the wider end away from the RV?

2chiefsRus wrote:
Thanks for posting on how it went. Just a thought on the three inch difference - were the sides hemmed? If it was doubled over on the ends to hem, then the difference in width may be to allow the doubled over part to be rolled away up in a wider area. If you have doubled over fabric for the entire piece, that can be too bulky to fit on the roll. Might not be it, but thought I would throw it out there.

Hmm, good point. Hadn't thought of that. But without pulling it in, it would "over" roll onto the end caps and cause too much tension to allow the arms to completely stow away. Putting a tiny bit of slack in the top cured the issue. I am by no means an awning guy. Perhaps there is a trick to fine tuning it I am not aware of. But what I did works so rather than fuss with it anymore I may just leave it well enough alone.

Thanks for posting on how it went. Just a thought on the three inch difference - were the sides hemmed? If it was doubled over on the ends to hem, then the difference in width may be to allow the doubled over part to be rolled away up in a wider area. If you have doubled over fabric for the entire piece, that can be too bulky to fit on the roll. Might not be it, but thought I would throw it out there.

Ok, so Installed the new Awning fabric last weekend. Color match was exactly what I was looking for. I ordered from CW but they ordered directly through Carefree. As I mentioned I have the Carefree Trabel'r electric awning. Despite what the dealership quoted me on the complicated install I found this particular awning very easy. I assume most typical awnings are spring loaded etc and granted cumbersome and dangerous to work with. This particular model was pretty straight forward but since no real instructions came with it nor are their videos on it, it was something I just figured out. I will detail the steps below:

1 - use the switch to run the awning out with a little slack.
2 - Remove the left - idle/non motor side plastic cover. There are about 8 screws holding the clamshell cover on. But that's all it is, is a cover. Removing this allows clearance for the cord grooves
3 - At this point I cut the awning near the groove. The one piece with valance attachment has 2 grooves close together that I guess after time made pulling it out more work than it was worth, cutting it freed up the tension and it slid off easily.
4 with the old awning removed I cleaned everything real good and let it dry.
5- Rolled out the new awning and let it heat up for an hour in the sun to loosen it up
6 - Starting at the top rail I fed it in the cord groove to the awning arms and then fed the bottom and valance cords simultaneously on the roller. Getting over the cap screws was tough with the hem.
7- Once I got the hem over the cap screws it was pretty smooth sailing. For this part I needed 2 people, me on the roof to guide the top and my neighbor on an 8 foot ladder guiding the bottom on the roller. Went very quickly.
8 - put the cover back on the left side, install the set screws in the cord to hold in place and DONE.

That was it. We took our time and total start to finish was about an hour and a half with a lot of cleaning and taking our time. I could do it again in an hour

A few notes - the arms have little lateral resistance especially with the awning removed. With the pushing and pulling I didn't want to rack it, so I put a towel on the bucket of my tractor and raised it to rest against the awning arms to provide resistance against the direction we were pulling. Left side to remove the old, right side when pulling the new on. If you don't have a tractor with a loader handy, you might want a person to offer counter resistance to the pulling of the old awning off and new on.

My only real complaint about the whole process was with the awning fabric itself. Quality control being what it is in the RV industry is not missed on awnings either. When rolling it up initially after the install the awning would start winding over the caps on both ends near the top. Took me a few minutes to realize that the fabric itself is almost 3" wider at the top than the bottom. Rather than make an issue about it, remove and demand a replacement, I pulled each end at the top in about an inch. This works, but I wasn't real happy with carefree for the un-square fabric. I mean 3", come on.

I did take pics but have no idea how to post.

PM me if this is something you are trying and want to DIY. Much cheaper, easier to DIY, no springs, no roller removal, pretty easy all in all. Slide off, slide on

Don't forget to post the details. Very interested in how it goes. Good luck on your project.

No that's not the one I have. My model is the travel'r. But my hunch was right. Both sides have a large plastic cover. To test my theory I removed the idler side cover and it's just that. A plastic cover over the mechanism. But just removing the cover offers enough clearance to simply slide the awning out. The trick is sliding it out while simultaneously sliding out of the top rail. Probably a 2 if not a 3 person job. One to slide out of the top rail, one to slide out the bottom rail, and one to enausre there isn't a laot of lateral pull on the arms while this is done. Install new awning in reverse order. Good news is there are no springs to fuss with. Just remove the cap and slide off, then on, replace cap. I'll let you know how it goes this weekend.

Instructions with Pictures

Is this the instructions you have?

the bear II wrote:
Do a search on YouTube you will find many videos showing the steps. 3 people seems to work the best.

I get to do ours soon.

I saw a few u tube vids but none for the carefree electric ones. I am thinking the whole deal with removing the tube and caps and spring tension etc, is not neccesary on the carefree electric. I could be wrong. I have no real idea what I am doing. But it looks like I can slide the fabric on, while everything is in place.

Do a search on YouTube you will find many videos showing the steps. 3 people seems to work the best.

I get to do ours soon.