Sail track fittings

[millard1399]

G'day All,

As you know, the most common method of attaching awnings / annexes to your van is to slide the rope through the sail track.

However, here's some information about alternative methods of attaching awnings, tarps, etc. to your sail track...

1. This item was posted by kylarama elsewhere on the forum, and is called a "sail slug"...




The 9mm diameter sail slug is used in the sailing industry (obviously ), and further information can be found here:

Whitworths Marine and Leisure

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2. This item was listed on ebay as a "Channel/Gutter Gripper"...



The description with the listing explains how they are used, as follows:
"As long as the tarp has grommets (the holes in the tarp to tie a rope to), it’s easy to attach the “gripper” to the grommet / eyelet. The gripper can be opened by spreading the wire and removing the nylon bush. Place the gripper wire through the grommet, then close the wire back into the ends of the nylon bush. Now your tarp has a holding point that will slide through your sail track. Designed to take up to a 25 kilogram load.

Sold in a packet of five, each gripper measures 35 X 35 mm X 8mm. Colour may vary. Priced at $16.99 for a packet of five.

Patent pending."

The seller is in Hervey Bay, Qld., and is apparently the designer/manufacturer. Since the current listings won't be there forever, it's best if you search ebay using the key words grippers or grippers caravan, to see if any are available.

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Comment: you could probably make your own based on the second item listed above.

As we discussed in another thread recently, eyelets are typically spaced about 1 metre apart in tarpaulins, etc., so you would have a metre length between eyelets unsupported in the sail track. That might lead to a problem in high winds or heavy rain. You could certainly add additional eyelets into the edge of the tarp to minimise that problem though.

cheers,
Al.

[kylarama]

Time permitting I'm going to try and follow Al's instructions on sewing a rope edge onto a poly tarp to use as a caravan awning.

If not there's always plan B

I drove past a marine store today and decided to do a U turn and check it out. Pick up 10 of these slugs for $1ea


Same ones as the whitworths link.

Don't know if they will be as strong as the ones Al found on Ebay, but spaced every 500mm on a 4.5m tarp (extra eyelets punched) they should be strong enough.
After all they are designed to be used in the wind!

[kylarama]

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!

Forget about buying those Ronstan brand sail slugs in the pic above. They DON'T fit.

Either their designed for a different kind of sail track or I've got a odd type track. With a little filing they might work, but what a pain. The one's Al found on Ebay would be the better option.

[millard1399]

My Millard poptop has two lengths of sail track fitted - one for the annexe, and another one across the front under the windows, where a canvas stone guard protector can be fitted. There is a difference in the bore diameter between the two. The annexe track is 9mm, and the stone guard track is a slightly larger diameter.

The sail track I recently bought at Bunnings for this house job...



...will allow a drill bit that is 8.8mm diameter to slide through it easily, with very little space left. The next largest drill bit at 9.2mm will not fit in the sail track...




My advice with any sail track fittings is to make sure they are LESS than 9mm diameter, and they should slide in the different bore diameters ok. If the fittings are actually 9mm diameter or larger, you may strike problems with some of the sail track profiles that were on the market.

The other thing I've noticed with the sail track on the Millard is that where it's bent down around the curve of the roof at the ends, the internal bore diameter is also changed slightly. Depending on how severe the curve is, anything that is rigid that you try to feed into the track (like my drill bit for example) might not go around the curve as freely as the straight. The roped edge of an annexe is flexible, so that's not an issue, but the gutter grippers shown above could be a problem if the nylon bush was too long in length.

cheers,
Al.

[kylarama]

Well, after the ill fitting sail slugs I decided to have a shot at sewing some rope into the seam of a poly tarp.

Double checked Al's advise and headed off to Spotlight and picked up some no. 14 machine needles (size 90 in the metric system) and a reel of black Gutermann upholstery thread, about $9 in total. Then off to BCF for a heavy duty Oztrail 8ft X 16ft poly tarp, $35. Plus 16ft of the trusty old 6mm yellow and blue Telecom rope for free.

I pulled out the better half's Janome, fitted the one sided foot used for doing things like zippers and set it for large stitches. Domestic machines don't like poly tarps, the little feet that feed the material won't grab the tarp so you have to manually push/pull the tarp through, making it a 2 person job.
This means the stitching is all over the place due to not being able to pull the tarp through at the correct speed of the machine and a few times I sewed into the rope resulting in having to unpick stitches or a bent needle.

I take my hat off to you Al for the brilliant canvas, poly tarp, shade cloth job you've done, this is alot harder than it looks.

We got there in the end, the stitchings a bit ugly but it fits perfectly in the track and the tarp is the perfect width and length. The only drama is the D rings on the tarp don't line up with the brackets for the annex spreader bars. So I just bought another pack of brackets and will rivet them into the van in line with the tarps D rings.


These are the D rings that came on the tarp. I just unpicked the stitching on them along one side.





I left the welded seam on and simply just folded it over the rope. Remembering to cut the small rope out of the welded seam on the ends of the fold.





Special stitching!





The finished product!!!!!!
Sorry, I was too lazy to put any poles or guy ropes up. So long as it fitted in the sail track I was happy.