Overland Pros vehicle awning (First Impressions)
I've finally picked up an awning for my newer roof rack. I've got a post up on my newest rack which is a spin off of my old rack. It was half built by Infidel Garage as he could bend tube and did most of the material grabbing. I finished it off by adding tie downs, cross bars, bike and fuel mounts and painting it. In the building of my new rack I kept in mind that I wanted to add an awning to it somehow. As it turns out it was pretty easy.
I chose a rectangular awning from my buddy at Overland Pros which is based here in Sacramento. I picked it up yesterday and promptly got it mounted in time for dinner at the lake with the kids. Yesterday was the longest day of the year and had a record breaking temperature, for the day, of 105* which meant there was no shortage of sunshine. To my surprise the mounting bolts for my removable crossbars were in the perfect place to mount the included L brackets. Unpacking and install time was less than 10 minutes which was awesome. If you search back 8 years ago you'll find the build of my homemade awning and while simple and cheap it was a 15 minute set up time and was best done with the help of at least one additional person.
I chose the 2 meter version which is 2 meters wide and 2.5 meters long (extended). This size seems perfect for the 4Runner especially since I don't have a full length rack. Any smaller and it wouldn't really offer much protection for more than one person. For the time being I have it mounted on the passenger side and it barely clears the doors. I rushed to get it mounted so when I have some time I'll stare at the mounts a bit and figure a way for me to quickly swap sides and lift the awning up a bit to fully clear the doors. Here is my old tarp awning that was less than 5' long and extended less than 6'. It was too small and the non adjustable legs didn't make it very useful.
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Here is the new awning. Much nicer, very stable and actually a usable size.
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The bag is really nice and heavy duty. It seems to have extra room which is perfect to pack along stakes and tie downs. I don't plan on keeping the awning mounted all the time, because of theft, but if I did the material seems like it's tough enough to hold up to the sun and rain. All the seams on the awning portion are seam sealed (taped) and the end corners are reinforced which is a nice touch.
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Overall I'm really impressed and excited to use this. It'll get it's first use this weekend while we're camping and I'll use the opportunity to figure it all out. The legs and extending poles are adjustable so I'll experiment with different tensions and heights hopefully finding a happy medium where the entire family can benefit.
Overland Pros just received a bunch of new products, like yesterday, so their website isn't up to date but I'll report back on pricing and how it worked this weekend.
