Girard Awnings Randomly Deploy

Behold, a Dutch Star approaches. Lorraine was away. I was busily dealing with some network configuration and programming. Head down for the most part. Hunched over my keyboard, clackity-clack-clack. Solving the world’s greatest technology issues one keystroke at a time. Although things were not going particularly well for the world’s greatest technology issues at this point in time.

Heaving a deeply dissatisfied sigh, pondering whether to destroy every last bit of silicon in every computing device within my grasp, I decided to turn away from my 4K display, covered as it was with technical gobbledygook.

And, just in case you need a bit of clarification on what exactly defines technical gobbledygook: language that is meaningless or made unintelligible by excessive use of abstruse technical terms.

Care for an example?

Where were we? Oh yes. Technical gobbledygook. All over my monitor. Too horrible to share.

I looked up from my computer just in time to see this Dutch Star slowing down in front of our site. The driver was looking very intently at our coach. I mean, yes, it is always nice and clean. And certainly people have slowed down to take a look. But this gaze seemed different to me. Almost if we had occupied his site.

He stopped.

Right in front.

I looked more closely to consider the situation. And then it struck me.

“Henny!”

Henny and Carole were our neighbours when we were at Myakka River Motorcoach Resort in Florida. What were they doing here, in front of my coach?

Henny had been at the Hitch House, a Newmar dealer about a 10-minute drive from our site. He had asked them if they knew me, which they do quite well, and if they knew whether I was in the area, which they did.

He made the drive up to say hello which was so nice. Wonderful to see him.

We talked about some of the issues that he had experienced with his coach, a 2018 Dutch Star, including a random deployment of the Girard awning. He had his rear awning randomly deploy. He now has it strapped with rope on the roof to hold it in place until the factory resolves the issue.

This thread is still up on the iRV2 forum but nothing further in terms of a technical service bulletin or recall for the random deployment of Girard awnings. I suspect that the incident count is still relatively minor compared to the overall population of coaches. Newmar is treating the issue on an individual basis.

The source of the problem seems to be poor wiring practices where the awning motor control modules connect to 110v power. A grounding issue can cause the awnings to randomly deploy.

It happened to our coach and, before we had the problem addressed at the factory, we simply unplugged the motor control modules from the 110v outlets when we were travelling in the coach.

Our issue was resolved by the Newmar tech redoing the grounding wires and running wires up to two motion sensors on the roof of the coach presumably to defeat voltage to the awning motors when the coach is moving.

Hopefully the 2019s and above closed the issue.