Time to put this issue to sleep. Since I felt unsafe with the stock SMB mounting system, I was originally going for Eli's Brackets. Eli was nice enough to send me brackets to try out and see what the body shop can do. (Thanks Eli!) The brackets worked well, but filling the holes that SMB put on the body, will require the body shop to disassemble the interior which will cost an extra $1500 to do.
If I have opted for this option, the body shop can either use a nut and bolt system through the van wall, instead of SMB's expanding nut, or weld it shut so they can install Eli's brackets.
Here the bad part; my insurance company will not cover the cost of our repairs because thier body shop says that it was SMB's workmanship that caused the brackets to failed. They stated that the awning should have been destroyed before the mounting system should fail. They inspected how they mounted the awning and they said it was a "Mickey Mouse" job and they would NEVER install an awning that heavy the way SMB does. The cost for body work, awning repair, new mounts that SMB would have charged us was $4500.00! (+$1500 to disassemble the interior if we went that route.)
I talked to our insurance company and told them that SMB did not think they were responsible for the awning and installation error on our less than one year old Rig that has never even touched a washboard road. The Insurance company decided to at least subsidized the cost by buying us a new Fiamma awning. We ended up paying $3500 for the body work.
Since we already have the nice 4 holes from the awning mounts, we decided to have SMB use their mounts and have them install the awning with the condition of re-enforcing them. They replaced our mounts free of charge and installed the new awning free of charge
Here's the fix: Hope this works better.
Sportsmobile (AKA Money Pit)
Linear Mode
