Questions, Girard Awinings and Cabinet Hinges

[Dick Simonis]

We just celebrated our 1 year anniversary with the Beaver and are still learning things about the coach.....suspect the learning will go on for quite awhile.

Regarding the Girard awning.  It seems that some more tension on the fabric would be useful, but I am at a loss to figure out if that's possible and then I realized that I don't even know how they work.  Do the arms extend and pull the fabric from a preloaded roller, or are the arms preloaded and the motor unwinds the fabric and allow the arms to tension it?

Also, I had the top hinge on one of the cabinet doors come loose where it screws into the door.  I thought is would be a wood screw that just needed some reinforcement but no, there are metal backing plates slotted into the doors and frames.  The fix required removing the door and reassembling, as the top screw had just backed out over time, but the complexity of the hinges amazed me.  What are they called and where does one fine them if needed?  The fact that they are even on a MH is a bit astounding as the cost of the hinges and all the work entailed in the installation had to be expensive.

[barbhalsell]

This may be what you are looking for as far as the hinge goes.

http://forum.bacrallies.com/m-1235184852/s-new/

[Tom and Pam Brown]

Dick,  

Had the same issue.  Girard told me to use 6 inch strips of duct tape stacked and place on the fabric as close to the roller as possible.  I know it sounds crazy but it works!  Put the tape directly in line with the areas the cloth seems to be loose.

If you need to contact me for info private message me or email me for my number.

Tom

[Jeremy Parrett]

Hi Dick,
  the Girard arms are spring loaded......pretensioned. Once you activate the mechanism the electric motor unwinds the awning to a set length. If the electric motor unrolls a bit more than the arms full extended length then you will have some slack in the fabric. Somewhere here you will find Geralds instructions on adjusting the "stops" on the motor for "in" and "out" !!  These are two allen screws mounted beside the hand crank key that are visible when the awning is extended. Mine needed adjustment so that the awning fully closed against the coach for traveling.

[Keith Moffett]

Hi Dick and all.
I had a rather extensive talk with Andre' from Girard a couple years back.  He was surprised that our original awning cover was still in place.  He said that they streatch over time and not evenly so becoming irregular in shape.  Since the tension on the material is all that rolls the awning in and more importantly 'keeps' in rolled up, if it is streatched it can unroll as you go down the road.  The cure is cheap and simple.  
1) make sure that the settings are right for extending fully and stopping when retracted.  This is to be sure that the awning tension is proper insofar as the start / stop switches can be set.  
2)  After extending the awning fully, use the manual awning crank and unroll the awning just a few inches further.
3)  Now place short pieces of duct tape or Gorrilla tape along the exposed roller.  Try to remember which areas of the awning had the sag and build that area up with a few more layers, less on the areas that were not so loose.  (I used 3 layers or 4 in the loose spots).
4)  Again using the hand crank, turn to tighten or retract just until the awning is back to its fully extended position.
5)  Repeat steps 2-4 adding one layer at a time until the awning is tight.  
6)  recheck open/close adjustments aka stop switches.

This procedure took me about 1/2 hour and fixed the problem completely.  When fully open the tape is not visible.

Best of luck
Keith