I had a free Saturday today so I did some mods/repairs I been wanting to do. First I installed an accumulator tank to the water system. Wow big improvement. I used the 2 gallon water heater expansion tank. I found one on line for $25 delivered. it took only about a half hour start to finish, and the results are well worth the effort and small expense. Then I decided to do a repair I've wanted to do since I first got my hybrid a couple years ago. The previous owner had a couple of small tears in the lower outer corners, where the tent ends stretch over the corners of the bunk floor. (sorry didn't take pics.) from looking at the design and material used it's understandable why this point would tear. The rest of the canvas is in excellent shape. Even though I knew it wouldn't work, when I first bought the trailer, I tried mending it with awning repair tape. Each time we went camping it bothered me, so I spent a considerable amount of time thinking about how to repair this myself without removing the canvas. What I came up with worked out really well, so I thought I would post here so someone else that may have the same problem can benefit. What I wanted to accomplish was a strong water tight reinforcement. I started by going to Wally world to purchase a plastic storage container with square bottom corners. I found one for $5.87. I took it home and cut one of the bottom corners out of it, I did this with a die grinder and cut off wheel, I trimmed off the melted plastic with some tin snips. I took this rough template to the bunk ends and dry fit it into position. I noted and marked this template with a sharpie. I took it out, re installed trimmed again, etc, etc, until I had the size and shape I needed. I made sure all the edges and corners were rounded so it would not chafe the canvas. I then took my template/reinforcement, and placed it on the remaining 3 corners of my plastic storage container and traced around it with a sharpie. I cut the other 3 reinforcements out of the container. I ended up with 4 identical corner reinforcements. I sanded them on the outside surface to give my contact cement something to adhere to. I then dry fit each corner carefully into the canvas lining them up just where I wanted them. (bunk ends expanded of course.) I then carefully drew around them with a pencil marking on the canvas where the contact cement would need to go, I peeled back all 4 corners of the canvases and carefully painted the the contact cement onto the canvas where marked, as well as on to my plastic reinforcements. After the cement dried, I very carefully starting at one edge making sure the canvas was stretched flat applied the reinforcement to the canvas. once applied I then pulled the canvas into the installed position making sure any wrinkles or problems were taken care of. Let cure and I now have a permanent repair that will never rip in the corners again. Sorry for the long post but I hope that this might help someone else out there.
