EVC tent replacement

[DenverB]

My first Winnebago tent replacement - took me 2.45 hours from start to finish.

Not sure how it takes 5+ hours as some have said. (Westfalias are apparently much more difficult, though frankly I can't see how they are all that different other than westies are much tighter when installed)

This tent is the cotton one from GoWesty.com. They have several options for tents. CaveVan.com has tents as well, including the ability to have a tent in a custom color (very cool!). Whatever you chose, make sure it's the best fit for how YOU camp.

Before you get started:

- make sure your drill batteries are charged. You’ll need a full charge on your drill to get through the job start to finish. There’s A LOT of screws.
- A bucket for all the damn screws.
- a few beers and a stereo/headphones by which you can crank some music (top tip: if you do this right, you can start and finish an entire phish show)
- sharpie marker
- WASH THE CAR. This is key as you’ll be pulling your brank new tent over the top of your van to get it on. It’ll also dangle over the side, so wash the entire thing.

Removal:
- start unscrewing the gray aluminum brackets that currently are holding up your existing top. Start on the sides and work your way toward the front/rear (less stress on the brackets as they start dropping with the weight of the tent). I started top front, moved to top rear then removed the two bottom afterward. LABEL EACH BRACKET AS YOU PULL IT OFF. Do it on the ‘outside’ of the bracket and it’ll eventually get covered up by the tent itself.
- Peel the tent off the top of the car. Its been siliconed in place, so you’ll need to tug at it. Once it’s been loosened, pull it all back to the rear of the van and using a ladder just pull it off the top of the car.
- Enjoy the strange look of your tentless car.

- Drink a beer.
- Now is a PERFECT time to remove the luggage rack up front, clean out the channels and re-silicone the black rubber stoppers that keep water from getting in your car. Do the same to the rubber stoppers in the rear.

Install:
- your tent should have a very clear top and bottom. Make sure you don’t put it in upside down (or inside out). The tent should have some sort of rope sewn into the top and bottom. Keep that in place. This is important, if you haven’t figured that out yet when you removed the old one. This is what keeps the thing from ripping out when you screw the material into the top and bottom with the aluminum brackets.
- find the center of the front panel either using measuring tape or by simply folding it end to end and eyeballing it. Mark it on the very top with the sharpie – keep it small, you don’t want to be staring at your pen mark the rest of the lift of the van. Do the same for the rearmost panel.
- now, look up at the top and find the center bracket screw up in the top. You don’t want to start putting the aluminum brackets back in yet, but it REALLY helps to tack the center top of the tent in place up on the roof before you do the next step. I used a washer to help support the weight of it hanging.

(top-center screw behind the 'super safety latch')
- with it tacked up front, go to the back of the van and start screwing in place the rear part of the rear upper bracket. This part sucks, but it’s best to get it out of the way I think.
- Cram yourself in the space (it helps to remove all the beds and front bed board) and find the center point of the rear of the tent that you’ve already marked. Now use the bracket to pinch the tent up against the top with one hand while pulling the “rope” part toward the bracket with your other hand – basically you want to make sure the ‘rope’ part lines up tightly with the bracket the SAME way it was on the tent you just removed.

- Screw in the rest of the rear of the bracket, but don’t move around the corners to the sides yet.
- Now start the rear bottom bracket. Make sure it is tight side to side, but you should have some slack in the material vertically.
- only do the rear and don’t move around to the sides.
At this point you should have the top and bottom of the rear of the van in place.
- Move to the front.
- Remove your tack screw and line up the tent on the bracket using the existing hole you’ve put in the tent.
- Screw the middle screw of the bracket and tent into the top to get it into position and work your way left and right, making sure you keep the tent taught horizonitally as you move.
- Tip: finding the existing holes in the top and frame of the car through the new tent can be an unexpected pain when drilling the tent brackets back into place. I used a small punch to help make a pilot in the material and it sped things up.
- Once you get the top front completed, move to the bottom front much like you did before. Again, keep the tent tight horizontally as you install it.
- Once you’ve got both brackets started up front, move screw by screw down the sides, starting on top. Keep it tight side to side until you’ve finished both front and rear brackets.
- At this point, the only thing remaining are the sides of the top and bottom rear brackets. This is where we take in the remaining slack on the tent that your’e no-doubt realizing.

- Start on the very end of the top rear brackets and work your way back keeping the tent tight up until you reach the rear lift brackets. At this point, the tent material will bunch up slightly in the bracket and the rope part won’t be as tight side to side.

(tent bunching up a bit by the brackets)
No worries, just tack it in and be sure to still try and line the rope up agains the bracket where you lay in a screw.Repeat on the bottom until every screw is in place.
- Enjoy a beer.

Final Tips:
- Corners can be a pain, but work through them one screw at a time. You may need to loosen a few of the rear bracket screws when you make your way down there to get the corners up over the brackets.

- Re-silicone the tent up front and on the rear. I don’t think the sides matter too much, frankly.

I’m sure I’m missing a bunch of stuff here, but there you go – very straightforward.
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'77 Transporter/camper (Bussy - Reef Blue/Pastel White)
'67 bug (Santos - VW Blue)
'84 Vanagon Westfalia (Pink Flamingo - Pastel White/Pink)
'88 Vanagon GL Westfalia (Frankie Says - Wolfram Gray)
'02 Eurovan Weekender (Green Apple)
'95-'03 Eurovan full campers and weekenders (rental fleet)
'84 -'91 Vanagon full campers and weekenders (rental fleet)
'72 Porsche 914 (Greta - RIP)

www.RockyMountainCampervans.com

[jaygreene24]

Great write up! Looks pretty straight forward. Any issues now? Has the tent shrunk at all since you installed it?

[FKinVT]

I wouldn’t have attempted the tent replacement without these directions. Thanks! I do have something to add that helped me when I did it. I noticed that the self tapping screws were bottoming out before they were completely bringing the angled aluminum snug. I found that enlarging all the holes allowed the screws to continue to spin and fully engage. Making all the holes slightly larger with a drill didn’t take much time and sped up the job considerably. So glad to have gotten rid of the old tent.