Picked Up the Awning and Got it Installed

So Emerson and I went to Yakima again (where we bought the Barth) for a little road trip to pick up what I thought was an 18 Foot A&E 8500 awning frame... turns out when I got it home and went to install it, it was actually a 19 footer... oops.

Well, we started out pretty early Saturday after dropping the cat off at the vet, Emerson and I went east and arrived in Yakima by about 9:15. We brought along plenty of ratchet tie-downs, old towels and U-Haul brand plastic wrap. Cameron (guy I bought it from) and I wrapped it all up and got her strapped down to the GTI for the trip home. Only adjustment I needed to make was the tie strap that went through the cab needed to have a rag under it so it wouldn't flap on the roof. This is my view on the way home:



So when I got home we unwrapped it, figured out it was longer than I thought it was... so we needed to make a few adjustments to make it work. First was now that it was an extra foot longer, I would need to mount the lower front foot above the wheel well, instead of in the trim behind it. I had to flip the top brackets over to make it fit.



Nothing to major. I will probably put another couple of screws in the top on either side of the mount point when I fully install it... right now since I don't have the fabric yet, this is a test run of sorts to make sure it fits and works properly.

So the front arm installed like this:



You can also see from here I needed to cut about 2 inches off the arm in the front to allow the inner leg and arm to retract enough to clip into the lower mount without lifting the arm out of the travel lock. This will not affect the total length of the arm at all, everything below that grey and black latch was not necessary for height.

and the rear into the trim (frame) like this:



You can see, there really is no longer awning that would have fit on this 25 Footer (remember the bustle is included in that length too)



and the full awning installed! (Awaiting new fabric, that green is NOT staying there! :)

Updates

Some updates, we all love updates, right?

Ripped out the carpet, most of the ceiling, sealed up most of the roof (leaking pretty good around the roof A/C), broke the AC shroud (can build another from Aluminum for under $60, could also be the leak at the AC), got a few car audio/video items (CD/DVD player for movies, Tunes Back-up cam, 21" LCD), took out most of the overhead cabinets to replace the ceiling, removed the old window tint. Still need to work on the Converter, then install an inverter and run inverted power from that to the rear for a 2nd 19" LCD Monitor, laptop and Speakers for the bedroom.

Overall work is going pretty slow with time, but things should start moving along here shortly.

Thinking of making the Dinette about 6" skinnier to allow a strait isle front to rear, and give more room in the "Kitchen" area. A single there is good enough, it's just the 3 of us anyways and we plan to make the rear a Super King too... and we have a bunk over the cab.

Other things on the to do is getting any additional wiring ran and all leaks sealed up while we have the ceiling down.

I think I might have found a 18' awning frame (arms, feet, roller) on CL, hopefully I can pick that up this weekend. Then it's calling in another favor from my dad to sew up another awning. 

-Mike