etrailer | Solera XL 12V Power RV Awning Review

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Full transcript: https://www.etrailer.com/tv-install-l...
Hey, guys, it's Jake here with etrailer. Today, we have a 2017 Vintage race trailer, and we're gonna be installing this Solera awning on it. Adding an awning to a race trailer that doesn't already come with one from the factory is kind of a no-brainer. You spend all day at the track or you're hanging out at the campsite after you've just had a nice race. Usually, people just end up hanging out on the inside of the trailers, especially if you have inclement weather. There's nowhere to hang out unless you're sitting inside, and that can also cause some harmful fumes if you're sitting inside with all your fuel.

So adding an awning is gonna give you a place to hang out outside, out of the weather, and out of the sun. This awning is gonna be 20 feet wide on your trailer, and it will extend nine feet and eight inches. That's a foot and eight inches longer than your typical awnings that'll come factory on your RVs or your motor homes, so it's gonna give you that much more shade and that much more space to hang out. The other nice thing about these arms is, as you saw, they are going to be a motorized arm. So with the flip of a switch, you can put your awning out if it starts to rain or you get inclement weather.

If you like winter camping and it starts to snow, you don't even have to leave the comfort of your camper. You can crack the door to make sure everything's going back in okay, but you just hit the switch and it'll come back in. These arms, what's really nice about 'em is they have an automatic rain draining feature. So if any water starts to collect on the awning itself, which is bound to happen because it is a flat awning, what will happen is the arms are on shock absorbers, and they'll pull down. They'll dump the rain off one side or the other, and you can actually set that.

You can set the pitch on these arms so that one side dumps always and the other side stays rigid, or you can set both rigid. But the pitch is really nice to set. You can pull one side down so that it constantly drains, and there's not random water flowing off the side of your awning. The fabric color that we have on today is going to be the white-to-gray fade, which looks really, really good. Typical awnings are always gonna be either all black or all white, and the all-white awnings are really difficult to clean.

The underside of this awning is still going to be all white, so you will still have to clean that, but that will also help to keep the area underneath it a lot cooler. We do have other colors available online if you don't like the gray or if you'd like something that matches your camper. The fabric on here is gonna be very similar to your traditional awning fabric, except the new style fabric is going to be much less porous. If you've ever had to clean an awning, I know when I clean my awning, it's a pain in the butt because the fabric is very, very porous and holds on to the mold and mildew. This is designed to not hold onto that. As far as the installation goes, it's not a difficult installation, but it might take some custom work. Like the trailer we put it on today on this race trailer, it took us making a couple of custom brackets on the inside in order to hold it firm on the side of our trailer, 'cause there's nothing inside the walls that it's designed to screw into. If you're putting this on an RV or a camper, they are designed to have awnings, and they have places where you can screw into recommended by the manufacturer. With that being said, let's go ahead and show you how to get it installed. To begin our installation, we need to start by getting our extrusion rails in place. Now, there's one of two ways you can do this. The way that we're doing it is gonna be a more custom fit. But the way that most people do this, in your kit, you're gonna get 24 feet worth of railing. Our awning is only 20 feet long, so we're gonna end up cutting our last piece down. But a lot of people will just run it, you know, from a general area on their side wall to the end and just wherever it ends, it ends. We're going to actually be cutting the last piece, so we took the support arm that will eventually hold our awning, held it up there, put a mark on the end of the bracket. Because the way that most people will do it, they'll just butt the the support arm up against the extrusion rail. We're gonna butt the extrusion rail up against the control arm. So instead of like this, it's gonna be like this. It'll make it look