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Thor omni latitude awning - critical safety issue
I’m posting this for any 2022 Thor Omni owners with a Carefree of Colorado “Latitude” electric awning or any other Thor models that might use the same model of awning. PLEASE read this rather long post to see if it might affect your awning operation.
On our third trip in our new Thor Omni BT36, we started to extend the electric awning and it suddenly shot out from the side of the RV, one of the gas shocks flew off, and the folding awning support arm on the right side (looking toward the RV) was therefore swinging loose. At that point, the retract button did nothing, so we couldn’t pull the awning back in.
While my husband tried to locate a mobile RV repair service in Durango, Colorado, I called Carefree of Colorado directly and spoke a tech who explained in detail how the awning is attached to the arms and motor. The awning shaft goes through the folding arm attached to the RV, an E-clip secures it from coming out of the arm, and the shaft then fits into the gearbox/motor assembly.
Here’s the important information: when our awning was installed, the critical E-clip wasn’t put in place, so the shaft of the awning had NOTHING securing it from sliding back out of the motor assembly and dropping out of the folding support arm. After a couple of trips in our new RV, the shaft of the awning simply vibrated out of the motor assembly, which is the ONLY THING keeping it from shooting out from the side of the RV from the 85 lbs. of pressure from each of the gas shocks. There is NO SAFEGUARD to keep the awning from flying open while driving if the roller shaft comes out of the gearbox/motor assembly and it doesn’t need to move more than about 1/2” for that to happen. I’m grateful to God that we were parked in an RV park when this happened. I wake up in the night still envisioning what would have happened if the shaft had come loose from the motor assembly while we were driving down a highway at 65 mph.
We were fortunate that we found a mobile RV technical in Durango that could help us. While he didn’t happen to have an E-clip to secure the shaft, he used an O-ring to hold it in place so he could slide it back into the motor assembly and we could retract the awning for travel. We have now had the e-clip put on and the gas shock repaired, but we may never put our awning out again.
From my perspective, having the entire structural integrity of the awning resting completely on a single E-clip is an incompetent and dangerous set-up. I’m very uncomfortable with the E-clip being the only thing that stands between us and disaster, so we plan to remove the motor again and slide a toothed retaining ring on right next to the E-clip for additional security.
I’m posting this because we have had endless quality problems with our brand-new 2022 Omni, many of them just bad workmanship, but some of them serious. This one could have been fatal if the awning had deployed while we were driving. I’ve attached the image from the Latitude awing service manual and circled the E-clip in red. If you’re concerned about whether your awning has the E-clip in place, you should be able to easily remove the black plastic motor cover using a screwdriver and visually inspect the exposed shaft. Or you can have your dealer or service center do it next time you have your RV serviced.
I hope this information is useful, since I’d hate to have other owners encounter what we did, or even worse. I have filed a report with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. If you have encountered an issue with either no e-clip on the motor side of your Latitude awning or the e-clip disappearing somehow, please PM me. I will give you the contact information for the inspector at the NHTSA.
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