Old vs new style awning brackets — are the old ones failure prone?

[John E Davies]

Mine are simple bent pieces of aluminum, the newer ones have extra welded gussets. Maybe because of this?

Those are stretch cracks from when the approximately 120 degree bend was made, so far none of the four brackets has a larger crack. It sure looks like a future failure point to me....

Has anybody seen a broken one? If somebody can post a picture of the new style bracket, that would be helpful. Comments?

BTW, I discovered that when inspecting the awning hardware, and I also found this.... which was contributing to creaks and pops. After tightening and lubing with silicone it was OK.

Thanks,

John Davies

Spokane WA

Edited April 6, 2021 by John E Davies

[Frank C]

Interesting discussion topic.  There have been a few owners that have lost their awning in high winds.  I’m curious as well what the failure point is when that happens.   Does the bracket fail?  Or the bolts holding the awning to the bracket?  Does any damage occur to the Ollie fiberglass hull itself?    

[Overland]

I'd much rather a bracket fail than the fiberglass it's attached to.

I've never heard of an awning completely detaching itself, but perhaps one has.  I believe that the brackets that attach the arms to the case are what fail in wind.  So you just get an awning that's folded over the top of the trailer without damage to either Oliver's brackets or the hull.

I think that the bracket design changed when Oliver switched to legless awnings.  Perhaps they were concerned that the constant flex of the unsupported awning would eventually fatigue the brackets.  

Edited April 6, 2021 by Overland

[John E Davies]

24 minutes ago, FrankC said:

I’m curious as well what the failure point is when that happens.   Does the bracket fail?  Or the bolts holding the awning to the bracket?  Does any damage occur to the Ollie fiberglass hull itself?    

The four Fiamma awning brackets each have a small attach bolt, much weaker than the really big ones (two per bracket) going into the fiberglass (which are reinforced with bedding compound, I hope)....

Edited April 6, 2021 by John E Davies

[topgun2]

For what its worth - the two awning "failures" that I have seen resulted from the wind taking the awning and bending it up and over the roof of the Oliver.  In both cases the support brackets did not seem to have moved but the metal and/or plastic pieces of the awning were toast.

Bill