Of all the creature comforts on Vandalf the Beige, the one that is the most valuable, and most consistently used, is our ARB 2500 awning. Our "living room" is defined by the space under the awning, next to the van. Whether it be sun, rain, or bugs, the awning (and accessories) helps protect us and make our time outdoors more enjoyable.
But all was not perfect in awning-land. We were in desperate need of an upgrade.
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| Photo courtesy Martin Meyers |
Our awning experience goes all the way back to 2010 with our 1995 LuLu Island (GTRV) Safari that was the organ donor for our pop-top transplant. One of the harvests from that purchase was a hard-case Norseman Apollo awning and the custom brackets necessary to fit the curved roofline of the Astro/Safari vans. Because the Astro/Safari doesn't have rain gutters like most fullsize vans, and because of the demands of where the pop-top touches the roof, the design of the brackets is non-trivial, so I was very happy to get these in the deal.
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| Norseman Awning - Sold to a new happy user |
On the donor van, the brackets were just screwed straight to the roof skin with sheet metal screws and gooped with silicone. I'm not sure if this was a LuLu Island installation, or something that came during the 15 years of that van's (hard) life, but this was NOT a great solution. Upon removal, I could see the stress cracking and generally poor condition of the Safari's roof skin.
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| Donor van, awning, and brackets |
Nevertheless, the brackets had the all-important correct shape, so I transplanted the brackets to our Astro van. For my installation, I created backing plates to match the hole patterns and through-bolted with stainless hardware. Much more secure.
So what's the problem? Well, as you can see from the donor van, we only got TWO brackets. With the very rigid (and heavy) hard case for the Norseman awning, this was probably sufficient. However, when we switched over to the "bag" style ARB awning in 2016, I noted that their installation manual recommended three. Four years later, and now I know why: The aluminum rail that forms the "spine" of the ARB has sagged slightly under it's own weight, since it was unsupported over the middle span.
This by itself was not a big problem, except that clearance from the bottom of the ARB's "bag" to the sliding door was marginally tight even at the beginning. Back in 2016, I'd drilled new holes to get the ARB up as high as possible on the brackets. Even so, with a little bit of sag, the bag was getting caught in the sliding door with increasing frequency. Time for an upgrade. Fortunately, my fab skills have come along since 2010, so I felt up to the task.
I started with longer material and cloned the original two brackets, using them as templates for the very complex set of bends needed to fit the ribbing and curve of the Astro roof. No less than five separate bends are needed for each bracket.
We live with our past bad decisions, so one of the complicating factors of copying the original brackets was the need to very accurately duplicate the spacing of the mounting holes. Keeping the roof water tight means I can't have oversized clearance holes, so I employed alignment pins and paper templates to accurately align the holes in the backing plates, roof skin, and new brackets.
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| Align 1st hole, then trace bracket on template, mark holes and transfer to bracket |
The alignment of the holes on the original brackets (relative to the stamping in the roof) wasn't great , but I drilled matching holes back in 2010, so I needed to stick with that arrangement. As I said, we live with our decisions.
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| Rear bracket bent and drilled |
Once the front and rear brackets were fabbed, I went through a similar exercise to bend up a new one from scratch for the middle. I also made matching backing plates for that bracket too. At this point, I realized I was in danger of getting something mixed up - now that I had a pair of backing plates for each of three brackets. Just as importantly, because I was working with the funky hole layout from the original brackets, each backing plate could only be used in one orientation. I went through and stamped each one to avoid confusion. This one fits the (R)ear (Inside) position, with the (T)op up, and the (F)ront of the van at the right edge:
Finally, I had three brackets, with enough space to raise the overall awning mount, and six matching backing plates.
The next step was to re-insert the backing plates. Some of these went easily up against the roof skin, but a couple had to be carefully guided into narrow channels. Previously, this had just been done with an extra set of hands, but didn't like that I had to worry about them dropping out of position if I ever pulled the brackets off again. This time, I put a square of 3M VHB tape on each backer and used my pins to get everything aligned before snugging them into position. VHB works best with good application pressure, so I tightened the alignment bolts down with each installation before moving on to the next piece.
Now I finally have solid mounting points for all three brackets, so its was time to drill the mounting holes for the awning rail. I measured up to ensure I'd clear the sliding door and clamped some c-channel as a straight-edge to mark for the holes. After drilling, it was finally time to paint the brackets.
After paint, I cut some 1/16" rubber gasket material and prepped the stainless bolts with anti-sieze.
And bolted the brackets into place for the final time. A little squish-out of the gasket makes me feel good about the holes being sealed. The pop-top covers this part of the bracket when closed, but this area can see water if we get rain while the top is up.
The last step was to slide a dozen 6mm hex bolts into the ARB's mounting channel and try to get them lined up with a dozen holes in the brackets. A little fiddly, but nice and secure once you get everything seated and tight.
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