Bed-Mount RTT Cab-Side Window

I've been getting a lot of great ideas off of this site for my new truck, so I figured I'd contribute something I did in the hope that it will help somebody out. Reading through a few threads on RTT's, I noticed that a few guys mentioned the same issue I found myself having with not being able to use the window awning on the cab-side of my bed-mount RTT. One of the window spring rods would interfere with the back of the cab, which of course is a bad thing as it would ding and even rub through the paint. My solution was to create a custom spring rod.

I went to a local spring shop and bought a couple of 4-foot lengths of 0.187" spring steel rod for cheap (always get extra for mistakes!). Then I picked up a propane torch and bottle at Home Depot. I then went to work heating and bending the spring rod into a shape that could clear the cab, have a good amount of spring tension, and position the awning correctly vs. the other standard rod. It took some trial and error, but I finally got a good shape figured out. The tricks were to not create too much of a bend to clear the truck (a huge bend and resulting extra long rod resulted in too little tension and the bend in the rod wanting to spin around and hit the truck cab) and to make the straight-line length of the bent rod the same as the standard rod that came with the tent. See the pics below.

The problem with heating spring steel to bend it is that it anneals it and the steel loses its tensile strength. I figured that wouldn't be a big deal, but when I pulled the rod back off of the tent I found that it had changed shape due to bending under tension at the bends I created. So I ended up having to quench and temper the bends to get back the spring steel properties. I did this by using my torch to heat each bend to cherry red and dunking it into some used motor oil to rapidly cool it. Then I used the torch again to temper the bend by heating it up to a bluish color. After that, the rod better retained its shape. There are some good YouTube videos on this.

I added some heat shrink tubing to the rod to help protect the truck in case the rod somehow flipped over and touched it, but the shape I ended up with is solid and the rod wants to stay put. Because I'm paranoid, I also sewed in some velcro to the awning as a backup to hold the rod in place. Seems to work great! Now all I need to do is go camping to really put it to the test!

 

Nice job, interested in hearing the long time use of this.