A&E 8500 Awning Camlok alignment

[Kamphiker]

Replaced 8500 series fabric, Did the whole removal from RV procedure.
When I put the spring assembly back in I must have got the locking Pawl out of place.

The latch works backwards it will not lock to keep from rolling back up but it locks trying to pull / unroll the awning.

My question is there a way to reset the Pawl correctly without having to drill out the 3 rivets & pulling out the spring assembly ?

Perhaps just unwinding the spring & reminding with the latch / Pawl in a different place ?

I know no need to remove the awning from the RV.

I replaced fabric on one of my past RV's 15 or so years ago and it seems I had the same issue but I fixed it some simple way without disassembling the spring mechanism.

[Chris_Bryant]

You can actually align the end cap without messing with the spring at all, if the rafters are holding the awning out, there is no pressure on the cam lock, so I extend the awning, drill the rivets, pull the cap out enough to rotate (you will be stretching the spring a bit, but it doesn't hurt anything).

I do it all the time, as replacement fabrics are usually thicker than original, so the cam lock will be off.

[dougrainer]

NO, You will have to drill out the rivets and release the spring tension to "clock" the camlock correctly. Question. The camlock, does it have Knurled splines or a gear tooth lock? IF NOT a Gearlock on that camlock you need to replace the complete RH torsion. Reinstalling a knurled Camlock will just fail shortly and unroll. Dometic changed the design of the Camlock years ago to a gear tooth design. Odds are when you installed the Torsion spring you got the camlock too close to one of the 3 awning fabric channels and it is hitting that. Doug

[newman_fulltime]

Sounds like you used to long of a rivet at the hole at the latch and its not allowing it to cam over the other way