Happy New Year and the New ARB Awning

Happy 2013! Personally, I’m hoping for an exciting year, with plenty of trips and adventures… And some budgetary stability sure wouldn’t hurt, either! I hope everyone had a great holiday season and also has a fantastic 2013 ahead.

We’ve started the year with a family hike in Sierra Azul and a family bike ride on our usual creek trail. On Christmas I got a set of 118db Hella Supertone Horns for the Land Cruiser that I swapped in that afternoon. They’re higher-pitched than I would like but they’re “hella” loud!

My big shock Christmas gift this year was a new ARB awning for Toyotie. Imagine my surprise on evening close to Christmas when I am standing at my front door, and the UPS guy comes marching into my yard with an eight-foot tube on his shoulder! We took it from him and set it down inside the house. Then I was promptly shooed away by the girls who were also abuzz, as they tried to figure out what exactly to do with this… this… this thing. It obviously wouldn’t fit under the tree, since it was taller by a few inches!

After about sixty seconds of whispered, frantic discussion they seemed to have thrown in the proverbial towel. Carrie found me and asked if I might want to open one of my presents early? Hahaha! I sympathized and agreed, and that’s how I got my awning. It was a huge (literally as well as figuratively) surprise to get it, and someone rightly described it as an “epic” Christmas gift. Thanks, hon!

The ARB awning has been part of my build plan for Toyotie since the start. I considered several other options but opted to go with the ARB model because of size, price, construction and durability, ease of use, and product support. I also had a chance to examine several awnings in person over the last year. The early frontrunner was the Hannibal awning, which needs no support poles or tie-downs, which is simply wonderful. But it’s like four times the price of the ARB, while availability and product support in the US has been problematic. The final deal-killer for me was that I didn’t think my rack was long enough to work the 2.4-meter version, and I knew that the 1.86-meter model was just way too small.

My awning is an ARB model 2500 awning, with “2500” representing the 2500mm length, which is 2.5 meters or 8.2 feet. Carrie purchased it from Amazon.com, where it is listed as stock number ARB3108 Brown 8′ Awning. It currently lists for $229.95, with free shipping.

Because we had a string of rainstorms, I delayed the installation of the awning until several days after Christmas. In the meantime, I pulled out the instruction booklet, checked out the awning’s aluminum mounting channel and the supplied hardware. Checking online, I’d seen that ARB sold an optional rack installation kit as well. I checked it – and several other mounting options – out via Google, paying close attention to different photos. Then I started brainstorming how I wanted to go about getting the awning attached to my INTI roof rack on the Land Cruiser.

It seemed that my best bet was to attach the awning to the vertical bars on the roof rack. This would give me several mounting points, allow some flexibility in the placement of those points, and also mount the rack high on the rack. The latter would help with headroom under the awning when it was deployed, and it also meant that the awning wouldn’t obstruct the side running lights on the rack. That said, it wasn’t how most people mouned the awning, so I was going to be on my own to some degree.

How exactly to mount it was something of a design challenge. The aluminum channel on the awning ruled out the simple use of U-bolts. I ended up making some sketches on the whiteboard in my garage to help me visualize things, and considered several options including making some simple bars to make the U-bolts work. In the end, I decided that I could use stainless steel hose clamps, along with short 6mm bolts and nyloc bolts as a simple but very secure way to attach the awning.I also figured that this would be one of the less-difficult ways to get it positioned properly on the rack. It also meant I could avoid drilling into the rack itself.

ARB recommends having three (and a minimum of two) mounting points, using six (minimum four) 6mm bolts. My installation used five mounting points and nine 6mm bolts, so it should be quite robust and solid. Since getting it in place, I have checked everything a few times and so far everything is still secure and tight.

My installation was pretty simple, and took maybe two hours including the work needed on the hose clamps. My wife helped me lift the awning into position for the test fitting, take it down again, and put it back for the final installation. Despite the awning’s length and size, it only weighs something like 25lb., so lifting it was never an issue.

That pretty much sums it up, but there are photos and more details in the photo gallery.