Thinking about a new awning

Dometic A&E manual is the way to go, you can have it rolled up in a few minutes if you need to. Sorry didn'mention that in my last post.

I have one of those on my fiver. Don't really care for it as I'm concerned it will not withstand the test of time. The motor seems weak and others with this have reported that although it's adverstised as being able to shed water that builds up on the fabric, it does not resulting in bent support arms. The awning does have a manual arm that you can pull down to give the awning some slant but the angle in my opinion would not be enough to shed rain quickly enough during a hard rain storm. If I had my choice I would stay with a manual retracting awning where you can drop one side to shed water. I do not leave my awning out at night or when we are not at the camper as I don't trust it. The other issus is that if the motor goes out, you have a 7/16th nut under the end awning cover that you use a socket wrench to manually retract the awning. I tried that at home to make sure I knew how to do it in case I needed too while camping. Let me tell you, the thing is geared so low that it would take a good 1/2 hour of constant turning to get a fully extended awning back up against the trailer.

Just replaced ours last week. Old one was 12 years old and in bad shape. Replaced the whole entire thing, all new hardware, fabric and roller which was slightly bent anyway. Sitting under it now as I'm typing this reply. Money well spent. I would find somebody else besides camping world, you never know what kind of service your gonna get. We went with a local smaller rv dealer, and had it done in three days.

harold1946 wrote:
Do you just need to replace the fabric or is it bad mechanically ?
Brand of the existing awning?

The fabric only needs to be replaced. I thought maybe I could upgrade the whole thing. The awning is a Dometic A&E.

We just finished replacing the fabric on ours. Not that hard of a job but it takes 3 or 4 sets of hands to ease keeping the wrinkles out. I think the elec ones just look flimsy.

Do you just need to replace the fabric or is it bad mechanically ?
Brand of the existing awning?

If you are going to go with a manual awning Zip Dee is the strongest in the market. Absolutely bullet proof.

Couple reasons I would not.

1) Look at how flat they are when deployed. Make sure you can adjust it low enough to keep sun out. Our old one I could lower by adjusting pins in the legs, newer one can't adjust that low.

2) Lippert...Look Lippert 5th wheel frame problems. They fell apart and Lippert did not stand behind their work. Many people got ripped off. I won't deal with a company that does that.

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=lippert+5th+wheel+frame+problems

I know it's pretty hard to get an RV that has no Lippert parts in it. Our latest RV only has doors and windows that are Lippert, the rest of it is "disease" free.