You are not logged in or registered. Please login or register to use the full functionality of this board...


Girard awning hack
#1

I am posting about my recent hack on the Girard awning to provide a solution to a catastrophic problem. 

The cause is this. Girard apparently used a plastic gearbox on the motor end of the awning, and has since converted to a metal gearbox. If and when the gearbox fails, it releases the motor from the awning tube, and the awning completely unfurls. The unfurled awning interferes with your fuel mileage and obscures the lane to your right. 

Luckily when this happened to me, I was very close to my house. 

The challenge is how to get the awning in, and keep it in so that you can continue your travels. Keep in mind the manual retraction mechanism IS the gearbox that just exploded. 

Inside the gearbox is a worm and a helical gear. To get the awning in, I drilled small holes and put screws in to hold the gear. That allowed me to press the switch and retract the awning. However, this fix only lasted about a 1/4 mile, but that was good enough to get me home. The problem is the awning motor has LOST where it is in the in and out positions, and driving activates the wind sensor. So if you have to patch it on the side of the road, either kill the power to awning (mine was on the inverter breaker box) or deactivate the wind sensor ( I used tape).

For a more robust temporary fix, I removed the end plate from the gear box, and removed the gear from the motor. The gear will self center on a boss on the front plate. With the gear in place I filled the front plate with quick epoxy. After the epoxy sets the gear cannot rotate, so the motor will turn the awning tube again. 

This will get the awning in, and keep it in. Remember though to kill the power, or disable the wind sensor to keep the motor from continually activating and potentially undoing the fix. 

It took five minutes to type this and three days to learn it. I may have left out all the failed fixes that I attempted. 

I hope you never have your Girard unfurl on the side of the road, but if you do, hopefully this will help.

Richard and Rhonda Entrekin
99 Newell, 512
Maverick Hybrid Toad
Inverness, FL (when we're home Cool )
Reply
#2

Great suggestions Richard. That will help get someone going again instead of being stranded.

Tom and I can attest that getting even a manual ZipDee patio awning back in after it unfurls while on the Interstate is no fun at all and there isn't a magic trick to those other than multiple people to manhandle it back in.

Michael Day
1992 Newell 43.5' #281
NewellOwner.com
Reply
#3

Good information Richard, but do you have any idea as to when they switched to metal gears?

2001 Newell #579
tow a Honda Odyssey
fun car: 1935 Mercedes 500K replica
Reply
#4

Chester,

I do not. I found one obscure reference on the interweb saying they recalled the plastic versions and replaced with metal. I don't know any details.

I am guessing your ultimate question is do you have plastic or metal. It would be easy to tell if you can examine the area where the manual crank attaches. The manual handle turns a shaft that goes into the gear box in question. If get a ladder and get up there, look to see the box above the handle is black plastic or some sort of metal.

A new one is about a 1000 bucks, nothing cheap about Girard. I guess I know what I'm getting for Christmas.

Richard and Rhonda Entrekin
99 Newell, 512
Maverick Hybrid Toad
Inverness, FL (when we're home Cool )
Reply
#5

Richard - This is really scary stuff. I can just imagine as I am going down a narrow 2 lane through one of the little cities on 411 and trying to keep the passenger mirror from contacting the utility poles right at the edge of the road when my Girard unfurls. It would not be pretty!

More stuff to worry about.

Might I suggest you put some kind of warning in your posts for worriers like me - maybe something to the effect of "Not safe for worriers". You know, like the "not safe for work" warnings :-)

Russ White
2016 Winnebago Vista LX 30T
#530  ( Sold )
1999 45' Double Slide - Factory upgrade 2004
Reply
#6

Russ,

You will happy to hear that there is a warning before the awning self inflates. If you hear a very loud banging coming from just over the passenger seat, like someone is hitting the side of the coach with a hammer, that is the sound of the gears slipping in the gear box. That's when you can officially start worrying.

I don't think this is common. I only found one reference on the internet to the awning failing like this.

I wasn't trying to say the sky is falling. What I was trying to do was to prevent a fellow guru from having the same UhOH that I had on the side of the road with the awning fully extended. One tends to ponder, Now What?

Richard and Rhonda Entrekin
99 Newell, 512
Maverick Hybrid Toad
Inverness, FL (when we're home Cool )
Reply
#7

I finally got around to ordering and replacing the girard motor. Two things of import that are worth mentioning. First, the gearbox of the new setup is metal. The metal gearbox allowed Girard to simply the mounting arrangement. The install was much easier than the earlier reinstall of the original motor. I was lucky in that I found the interior power cord simply by looking over the passenger side valence. Sweet, I thought I was going to have to remove the round transition piece between the ceiling and the wall but I did not.

The second thing I ran into was that although I wired the new motor to the same color scheme as the old motor, it ran backwards. When I pushed the retract button it wanted to extend, and of course the extend button retracted the awning. I thought to just reverse the labels. However, it hit me that the wind sensor would tell the awning to behave backwards if I left the wiring this way. I didn't want the thing to unfurl on the highway again, so I reversed the brown and the red leads and all is well.

I am not posting a part number on purpose. Since there were variants of that awning on different era coaches, I think it best to call Girard if you have to replace a motor. I will say in hindsight, that what I assumed was a proprietary part may not be so at all. Let's just say that after seeing the new one, that a giggle search for a 235 watt size 45mm AC tubular motor might have saved me over $500.

Richard and Rhonda Entrekin
99 Newell, 512
Maverick Hybrid Toad
Inverness, FL (when we're home Cool )
Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)