Hi All,
After a long hiatus, we finally got the can back out on the road and into a camp spot just this week gone.
After consulting Camps 7, we decided to explore Gippsland, we headed off towards Lakes a Entrance and ended up at a The Glasshouse Camping area at Lake Tyers.
Picked out a good spot, bit of a view but out of the way- just how we like it.
Things were going along very well, almost too well, the calm before the storm I guess you could say
A few days in, and we had just met one of the neighbors, (who as it turns out lives about 10mibs down the road from us!). Walking back to the Expanda, a fool wind had picked up, and the sky was blackening.
Before we could batten down the hatches, it hit us like a ton of bricks - winds gusting up to 80km/h (or so we found out later) and driving rain.
Our once pristine Carefee awning had taken to the wind and was flying high above the van with legs akimbo. The stabilizer arms were still attached at both ends but only just!
Now I'm sure most of you know aluminium doesn't bend too well before fatigue arts in, and cast aluminum has even less tolerance.
After wrestling the awning back to earth (it was touch and go for a while when I was lifted of the ground by what was now a very effective spinnaker trying to take the van out to sea), the two top brackets for the stabilizer arms were no longer recognizable.
The photos below tell the tale. We stopped at Jayco Gippsland in Bairnsdale on the way home and picked up a couple of new ones and I fitted them up once home. A very simple job really, the most difficult part is setting the river head - you could manage without a river header, but it looks nicer if you have one
I had to straighten the guide brackets on the van as well as "tweak" the alignment of the sliding channel runner and top clip, but still pretty simple. All up was done in about an hour.
I added some washers between the moving parts when inserting the rivers to help keep things moving, and also added some washers to the heads of the coachscrews that attach brackets to van wall.
All in all I think I'm glad the brackets broke as they did- probably stopped the screws being ripped out of the wall and leaving a bigger repair job!
Anyway, it's a lesson learned
I have since added some white paint to obscure the ugly screws and washers.
Cheers,
Paul
After a long hiatus, we finally got the can back out on the road and into a camp spot just this week gone.
After consulting Camps 7, we decided to explore Gippsland, we headed off towards Lakes a Entrance and ended up at a The Glasshouse Camping area at Lake Tyers.
Picked out a good spot, bit of a view but out of the way- just how we like it.
Things were going along very well, almost too well, the calm before the storm I guess you could say
A few days in, and we had just met one of the neighbors, (who as it turns out lives about 10mibs down the road from us!). Walking back to the Expanda, a fool wind had picked up, and the sky was blackening.
Before we could batten down the hatches, it hit us like a ton of bricks - winds gusting up to 80km/h (or so we found out later) and driving rain.
Our once pristine Carefee awning had taken to the wind and was flying high above the van with legs akimbo. The stabilizer arms were still attached at both ends but only just!
Now I'm sure most of you know aluminium doesn't bend too well before fatigue arts in, and cast aluminum has even less tolerance.
After wrestling the awning back to earth (it was touch and go for a while when I was lifted of the ground by what was now a very effective spinnaker trying to take the van out to sea), the two top brackets for the stabilizer arms were no longer recognizable.
The photos below tell the tale. We stopped at Jayco Gippsland in Bairnsdale on the way home and picked up a couple of new ones and I fitted them up once home. A very simple job really, the most difficult part is setting the river head - you could manage without a river header, but it looks nicer if you have one
I had to straighten the guide brackets on the van as well as "tweak" the alignment of the sliding channel runner and top clip, but still pretty simple. All up was done in about an hour.
I added some washers between the moving parts when inserting the rivers to help keep things moving, and also added some washers to the heads of the coachscrews that attach brackets to van wall.
All in all I think I'm glad the brackets broke as they did- probably stopped the screws being ripped out of the wall and leaving a bigger repair job!
Anyway, it's a lesson learned
I have since added some white paint to obscure the ugly screws and washers.
Cheers,
Paul
