If your windows don’ t retract, a little WD-40 will probably get it working again.
You see, Australia is a harsh country, and it doesn’ t matter how well built your caravan is; if you use it often enough, stuff is going to break or at least require ongoing maintenance. Having some skills using basic tools to solve these problems can save you time and money.
Here are a few examples of the sort of things we have had to fix ourselves.
FIX A ROLLER WINDOW BLIND
Anyone who has the push-out style of window on their caravan will know they have a habit of binding up to the point the roller mechanism fails. This happened to the window in our ensuite. I spoke to a few people who suggested the likely cause was a broken spring inside the roller, and the only solution was to replace the entire window.
At the time, a replacement cost about $ 400! I was flabbergasted. Imagine if the same thing had happened to one of the larger windows. I wasn’ t prepared to cough up that sort of money, so I did a bit of research and discovered these windows were completely serviceable.
The process was pretty simple. Remove the inside window surround to expose the blind’ s roller mechanism. Remove the small plastic retainer holding the roller in place. We had no tension in our roller at all, suggesting the internal spring had become dislodged. I carefully prised the end cap off the roller and found the spring loose inside. It just needed to be pushed back onto the end cap, given a few turns to re-tension it, and the unit reassembled. The blind worked better than ever and never gave us any trouble again.
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