Does anyone use a pulley to get their awning on? I can only see a Kampa one on the internet and am not sure really whether it would help. Is there anything else on the market? What is other people's experience?
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Kampa is the only commercial device I'm aware of, but I made my own version for a lot less expense as I had many of the parts anyway.
As to effectiveness, absolutely brilliant. I've got a Kampa Rally Air Pro 330 awning which is quite heavy, the bead entry point on my caravan rail is very low down at the front of van, and I need to fit the awning on my own.
The way I use it is to firstly stop the awning slipping back in the rail under it's own weight whilst it's being fed into the vertical/sloping section of rail, feeding the awning up the rail with one hand and keeping tension on pulley cord with the other to stop it slipping back, using it more like a brake than a pulling device. Once the awning has reached the horizontal run and it doesn't want to retract under it's own weight so much, then I start to use the pulley to pull the awning along whilst ensuring the bead is feeding into rail properly.
The pulley means I don't have to keep running from one end of awning to other, from feeding and aligning at one end whilst pulling along at the other end! You really need to be in two places at the same time and that is beyond me, but the pulley effectively makes it possible!
I find the resistance whilst the awning is initially being fed up the vertical/sloping section of rail too great and the pulley is not actually pulling inline with the rail so I can't pull the awning along with the pulley alone, but once it has reached the horizontal section and the pulley is truly pulling in line with the rail, then the pulley can move it along. I clean the awning rail before use, and apply a silicone lubricant to ease the awning bead through the rail.
I did fit the awning once before I had the pulley system, and it was such a struggle, if you let go of it before it reached well into the horizontal stretch of rail, it just fed back out of the rail under it's own weight and you had to start from scratch!
I've also got a much lighter weight 2.4m ordinary poled awning, and I don't bother using pulley for that, it's so much easier to fit and the pulley would only be an inconvenience rather than asset.
There is a much more recent post, but can’t find it at the moment.
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I've got a a Kampa awning pulley and find it somewhat beneficial with the heavy 260 air awning but reading the comments by Monty15 he explains in detail exactly how to use which is a good guide to follow.
Have a look on 'YouTube' as there are some short videos which may be helpful showing you a basic guide how to use the pulley system.
I bought 1 metre length of awning pipeing strip and put an eyelet in each end of it then attached this to end of awning strip and then the other end to the puller. This then pulled round the rail from the awning rail feed in slot, allowing me to pull the awning up vertically before going along the top of the rail single handed.
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Topic: Awning pulley
via mobile 08/7/2022 at 10:38am
