# It Looks Like My Awning Has Taken A Turn For The Worse



## H2oSprayer (Aug 5, 2006)

Today, after a wonderful weekend of camping, I went to roll up the awning. It looks like I have the A&E Sunchaser from Dometic. After I stowed the rafters and flipped the lever to retract the awning, I could hear and feel a grinding in the awning tube and the awning would not retract on it's own. I was able to manually retract the awning by rolling to tube by hand. After the first couple of turns by hand, the grinding went away. After searching the net for a while, I have been unable to find any decent parts diagram, but I was able to find this photo of the spring assembly --> spring assembly (scroll down to bottom of page). From that photo, I am unable to tell if there is a sheer pin in there that may have broke (causing the grinding sound). Does anyone know where I can find the actual installation instructions, including how to tension the springs for the Sunchaser? Looking through all the included documentation from Keystone, the only literature I have on the awning is a users guide.


----------



## Scoutr2 (Aug 21, 2006)

H2oSprayer said:


> Today, after a wonderful weekend of camping, I went to roll up the awning. It looks like I have the A&E Sunchaser from Dometic. After I stowed the rafters and flipped the lever to retract the awning, I could hear and feel a grinding in the awning tube and the awning would not retract on it's own. I was able to manually retract the awning by rolling to tube by hand. After the first couple of turns by hand, the grinding went away. After searching the net for a while, I have been unable to find any decent parts diagram, but I was able to find this photo of the spring assembly --> spring assembly (scroll down to bottom of page). From that photo, I am unable to tell if there is a sheer pin in there that may have broke (causing the grinding sound). Does anyone know where I can find the actual installation instructions, including how to tension the springs for the Sunchaser? Looking through all the included documentation from Keystone, the only literature I have on the awning is a users guide.


It sounds like you've hit on the problem, Chris. I bet your dealer has a set of instructions. Perhaps if you are nice, they may share them with you. (But that is how they make their real money!) I ordered a Dometic awning for my popup some years back and had trouble with the spring mechanism. A couple things I can tell you from experience:


Be careful when disassembling the spring mechanism. If you are wrong about the problem, the spring will unwind - violently - as soon as the end pin is realeased from the slots in which it is held.
This is a two-person job. And it can be dangerous if you get the spring all tensioned properly and then lose hold of the parts. I had a big bloody "pinch" injury from that!
The springs have to be tensioned in a certain direction - each spring assembly in the opposite direction (when you're working on it you're viewing it from the end - so one winds CW and the other is CCW)
There is a specific number of rotations for each spring assembly. Too many and you can't get the awning deployed all the way. Too few and it won't roll up completely. (The Dometic engineer had to go to the factory floor and ask the workers how many turns







)
Hope this goes easier for you than it did for me!

Mike


----------

