We have a 2000 Pennine Pullman. It still looks great apart from the transit cover. We've made a few repairs over the years, on the inside of the cover. The one thing that we'd always put off was restringing it as it looked so difficult, however, we could wait no longer as the billowing at the back was too much to ignore. We did it this afternoon. It went really well.
We cut the old cord about 2 feet one side of the front channel. We tried as much as we could not to take the cover out of the front channel, but there is no way around that. We joined the new cord to the old one with a very small piece of duct tape. Don't use too much or the cord won't go through the sleeve! You do have to feed it through very carefully, wiggling and shaking the sleeve to loosen it as you go. It's definitely a two man job. Continue to feed the cord through the sleeve for about 2 metres, then feed that new cord through thechannel. Offer up the cover and feed the cover back through the channel.
Put the cover back on the camper loosely and feed the cord through the eyeholes in the cover. If you just feed the cord through loosely, that should be about right. Then pull the cord over the hooks on the side of the camper. I ended up using a reef knot to tie the cord together. Pennine had used some metal connecting device originally.
I bought 20 metres of 5mm shockcord (or bungee cord). It seems only to come in 5,10 or 20m lengths). 10 metres would not be enough. 5mm is a tad thinner than the cord Pennine used, but it did the job. The cord cost £15.90.
I did ours earlier this year (2004 Sterling) had no problem pulling the tarp from the channel at the front, it also allowed me to give it a good clean as the amount of muck in there was unbelievable.
I found trying the get the new cord through without taking the tarp out of the channel virtually impossible, with the tarp out I managed to pull the new cord through single handed, and I used 6mm cord bought off feebay.
Hi, all. Thank you for the info about sealing the ends and joining them. Agree that it's virtually impossible to do it without taking the cover out of the channel. Anyway, it's rained a fair bit since we did it and no problems.
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Topic: Restringing a transit cover
