Hi,
My friend had a campground repair place fix his while I was at the nearby table. Basically, you put in a cotter pin to hold the tension on the spring while removing the brackets or whatever. Then remove the cotter pin to put more tension back on the spring.
To wind the spring back under tension, he used a ratchet wrench. Don't know what size, I was not paying that much attention to the work. If you know how many wraps the awning is around the roller, then add about 4 more turns, it will be a great place to start with tension. Say the awning wraps around 8 times, + 4 = 12 turns to pre-tension the awning spring. Then put in a cotter pin ( DO NOT bend it) and then re-attach the bracket to the awning arm. After this, you can remove the cotter pin by tugging slightly on the awning fabric, to unload tension from the cotter pin to the awning fabric, and after the cotter pin is removed, the spring will be ready to wind the fabric back onto the main roller.
Reading the instructions for changing out the awning fabric would be a great place to start for proper insturctions on how to tension the spring.
Be VERY careful, as the spring has a lot of potential energy, and could tear your fingers off if you get it pinched between a movable end bracket and the awning fabric.
Fred.
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