Hello
I thought it would be good to share my Hillbilly Engineered wind out canopy leg brackets design.
On my Ducato PVC camper I have installed a Fiamma F80s wind out canopy - this came with two plastic brackets
that can be screwed to the side of the van so the canopy legs can be slotted into them instead of being pegged to the ground.
I didn’t want to screw them to the van, mainly due to aesthetics but also from anticorrosion stance.
So I bought;
two neodymium 80mm dia rubber coated magnets with a 50kg breaking strain
and a M6 centre threaded hole.
two pieces of 75mm dia aluminium billet with threaded centre.
I could only get these with M8 centre thread, so I also located M6 to M8 threaded adapters. These had to be reduced in length to allow a snug face to face fit between magnet and aluminium billet.
The Fiamma brackets were affixed to the aluminium billet pieces using dome head M4 threaded screws which the billet had to be marked, drilled and tapped for.
Then it was assembly time - magnets to billets, brackets to billet.
I tested them on my tool box and found it was easier to remove them by using a 300mm long steel bar with a m6 thread on the end, unscrewing the billet from the magnet then attaching the bar to the magnet and using it as a lever to gently remove the magnet with no fuss.
Here they are being put through their paces
They cost the princely sum of £41 - I found after I’d made these that there are similar devices on Etsy from Europe that are circa £70 + carriage if you don’t fancy the diy route.
Obviously there are the usual common sense caveats that all the risks are the end users as to how they perform, what weather conditions they would not be deployed in etc etc…
I thought it would be good to share my Hillbilly Engineered wind out canopy leg brackets design.
On my Ducato PVC camper I have installed a Fiamma F80s wind out canopy - this came with two plastic brackets
I didn’t want to screw them to the van, mainly due to aesthetics but also from anticorrosion stance.
So I bought;
two neodymium 80mm dia rubber coated magnets with a 50kg breaking strain
and a M6 centre threaded hole.
two pieces of 75mm dia aluminium billet with threaded centre.
I could only get these with M8 centre thread, so I also located M6 to M8 threaded adapters. These had to be reduced in length to allow a snug face to face fit between magnet and aluminium billet.
The Fiamma brackets were affixed to the aluminium billet pieces using dome head M4 threaded screws which the billet had to be marked, drilled and tapped for.
Then it was assembly time - magnets to billets, brackets to billet.
I tested them on my tool box and found it was easier to remove them by using a 300mm long steel bar with a m6 thread on the end, unscrewing the billet from the magnet then attaching the bar to the magnet and using it as a lever to gently remove the magnet with no fuss.
Here they are being put through their paces
They cost the princely sum of £41 - I found after I’d made these that there are similar devices on Etsy from Europe that are circa £70 + carriage if you don’t fancy the diy route.
Obviously there are the usual common sense caveats that all the risks are the end users as to how they perform, what weather conditions they would not be deployed in etc etc…