RV Roof Replacement PART 2: Removal of Rear/Front Termination Bars, Awning, Slide Covers, and Side Trim

RV Roof Replacement

PART 2: Removal of Rear/Front Termination Bars, Awning, Slide Covers, and Side Trim

We thought the removal of the side trim and awning would only take a few hours, and therefore had planned to start removing the roof membrane that day, but as usual, it ended up taking us the entire day. For some reason we thought we needed to remove the awning from both the side trim bar AND the roller so we spent a good time thinking about how exactly we were to do that. We realized that the channel that holds the awning in the roller was blocked by the end cap, and for some reason thought this was a mistake by the factory as surely they meant to put it in the channel that wasn't blocked by the end cap. We spent so much time trying to figure out how we will remove the awning from the roller bar that we ended up having our very first panic moment. Thankfully, I posed the question to my DIY RV maintenance group on Facebook and people reminded me that the open channel was for accessories and not for the awning. So yes, we could remove the awning from the channel by drilling through the rivet on the end cap BUT, because we were removing the side trim anyway we didn't need to do that. What were we thinking? 

Roller bar end cap showing open channel that is for accessories

So, we ended up rolling the awning out about a foot and securing it with zip ties. We discovered that our awning did NOT have tension so all we needed to do was use heavy duty zip ties to hold it in place. Then, we simply removed the screws from the side trim and let it dangle with the awning.

Awning secured in place with heavy-duty zip ties

For the slide covers, we faced a different dilemma. Those roller bars were under tension, so we needed to secure them to prevent it from trying to roll up on us. To do this, we placed a screwdriver into one of the holes on the end cap of the roller bar and let it unroll a bit until it caught. Then, we slid the canopy covers out of the channels on both the roller bar AND the side trim at the same time. We later took these outside and gave them a good wash as they were a bit dirty. We repeated the process for the second slide cover and then began on the termination bars and side trim.  

Inserting screwdriver into awning cap to prevent it from rolling

We began by removing the vinyl screw cover trim to reveal the screws underneath that needed to be removed. We noted that the vinyl screw cover trim was folded up underneath the termination bars. We correctly believed that this would be important upon reinstallation- according to my research the vinyl trim tends to shrink in the sun, so having it screwed at both ends into the termination bars prevents it from pulling inward, revealing the screws at the end. 

The rear termination bar was fairly easy to remove with a painter's spatula that we used to shimmy underneath to loosen the butyl tape after removing all screws.

Next, we removed the side bars, making sure to label them in their correct orientation. 

Side bars removed

Our next goal is to remove the TPO membrane- read on for Part 3!