Last week in FL I had trouble getting my patio awning to open and was pulling on the rear rafter (hard) to get to the pull strap. (It now sports a parador loop extension). I pulled so hard the sticking on the flex key broke and the whole thing crashed to the ground. I was at Sun n Fun in mid-airshow and didn't have the time to wait and deal with it after the week, so I thought I'd have to abandon it there, because it wouldn't seem to fit inside. This forum came to my rescue again, and after reading Kenhat's saga of an on-road deployment and putting his awning inside the coach, decided to take off the aluminum cover and test fit to see whether I could get it inside. The solution was to angle in through the side window just behind the passenger's seat and take it back over the bed until it would fit inside. Tied it to the table and passenger's seat post and drove it home. Just ordered a new flex key and a safety latch from Zip-Dee. The fabric is in amazingly good shape after 30 years.
One other issue is that the poly cording core left in the flex key was extremely brittle and, I assume, so is the cording attaching the awning to the aluminum cover, since 6 inches or so on each end of mine was missing.. Since its already out of the channel, I ordered another 18 feet of cording to try to thread into the awning and push out the old cording. Anyone ever tried this? May not be possible.
Glad you were able to get it in. It sometimes takes a little Yankee ingenuity to get it in. You saved yourself a bunch of money.
I'd talk to Zip Dee about getting the cording out. They have always been very helpful when I've talked to them.
see ya
ken
If one failed may be time to time change all of them. I recently did and won't give it another thought for twenty years
Scott