G'day all, I ended up ringing all the caravan & awning people in sydney & none answered or called back after leaving voicemails, so I contacted the insurance company with an online quote for just the parts from caravanandrvworld.com.au in Penrith. GIO were great & sent me a check as I advised them I wanted to install myself..
So as per below the new awning arrived , its a carefree 12' grey fade in colour & packed very well. I'm not real good at putting these diy instructions together but here goes.. Any questions let me know.
I MUST WARN THAT THESE AWNINGS ARE SPRING LOADED. They have a seperate spring on either side. So when you lock the side with the open close lever it locks one side but not the other..you have to be careful when removing the old awning.
So first step is to put the old awning into the packup position. That way the springs have lost most of there tension ( there is still some tension !) then flick the lever to OPEN so the right hand side is locked. The left side can't be locked..
Undo the two Phillips head screws that are on either side of the sail track attached to the caravan. So it can be slide out to the left.
Then undo the two screws holding the barrel to the uprights.. After this is done it can be lifted off.. The right side will be locked as its in the open position but the left will have a bit of tension & will want to spin a few revolutions. I put vice grips on but I probablycould have just used my hand..
You then lift off the two sides ( the lever side will be easy), the side with the vice grips just unwind a few turns so there's no tension. You then walk it off with a helper.. I had my wife help so no photos too busy arguing, you know what I mean.
The end result is this, I cleaned up the sail track a bit but was easy to slide out the old one & slide in the new.
The new awning can then be slid into the sail track & the two end bits put over the uprights. When I put it all back due to the the line up of the end caps it was about one revelation loose. That's no problem because the new one comes with some locking pins that need to be removed once all in place , this will remove all the slack.
Put the screws back into the end caps that go into the verticals & the two screws into the sail track .
Pull out the split pin that carefree put in first then flick the awning lever to close which will remove any tension.
Should be all good now & look like this