Awning for Mk6 - any ideas...

[Lee J]

OK folks here's a little project for y'all. I have a MK6 350 lwb, medium high roof. Problem is when I'm unloading and have the back doors wide open and it's p!ssing it down I get soaked and the rear of the van gets soaked too.

So, I want an awning for the rear of the van. It'll preferably be mounted on the inside and be a pull out type. I wanna open the doors, pull out the awning and stay dry.

Can some one design me one or does anyone know where I can buy one.

[Terry]

Some of the older electricity/gas company vans used to have a glassfibre (well I think is was) canopy that slid out along (or very close too) the rain channel and came out over the rear doors. Can't be precise because I never saw one close up.
Might give you an idea of where to start looking......
H.T.H.
Terry

[sc_BK]

Prolly no use to you but in the past when i've had to work at the back of the van in the rain, I opened both doors and put a sheet of clear corregated plastic between them

[Iceberg]

I'm looking to do the same thing, and for the side door too. I posted a week or so ago http://fordtransit.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17055

As soon as I have a few minutes I'm going to go and look at some. Will let you know how I get on.

One of my mates has an ex BT transit with the system you describe (the plastic puul out thingy). The theory works well, but water still gets through, and more to the point it collects and pours into the inside of the van just when you don't want it to. There are drainage channels, but they don't appear to be too effective. I'll get him to bung some pics on here. His experiences pushed me into the awning route as I reckon it would be easier to get something that pulled out from the roof and flapped over the doors which would be nice and dry then.

R's,
J

[steamdrivenandy]

You'd think that having a 'lifthatch' type door at the back would stop the problem but it doesn't.
Yes you get a nice large roof to shelter under when the door is open BUT you can stand in the dry and watch a stream of water roll off the top corners of the door onto the floor of the rear of the van. It's bad enough when parked on the level but, of course, gets worse when parked on a slope with the nose facing downhill. In theory it shouldn't happen when parked facing uphill but Sod's Law always says that when it rains you're always parked facing downhill.

[scratchy will]

I've just fitted a Fiamma F65 260 to the side of my SWB LR transit, used it for the first time yesterday in the p*ssing rain (i do mobile vehicle paint repairs) and it was superb. I'll post some pics as soon as i can. Takes about a minute to set up and put away and creates a nice dry working space underneath.

[Iceberg]

Would be really interested to see the pictures as this is the one I've been looking at.

What method of mounting it did you go for?

Many thanks,
Jason

[scratchy will]

I'll try and post them up here later, the place i bought them from (agent Fiamma) tried to make me buy a fitting kit, and 3 roof bars to fit them to, an extra £100, This raises the awning off the roof buy another couple of inches aswell, i wanted a better, sleaker install than that. In the end i just ordered the standard fitting brackets (£30) that attach to the awning and bolted them through the roof, Start to finish took around 2 hours to fit!

You'll need to order some sort of bracket from them because as i discovered the awning has no fixings at all on it, just grooves for there special brackets, no way to fix it to anything without them!