Fixing a shade

One of our MCD shades had broken a few weeks ago -- the "day" shade (just darkening not black-out) had its internal spring break and so the fabric all wound down and wouldn't retract. Carl spoke with the MCD person who was at the Newmar Kountry Klub rally and the MCD guy indicated that if Carl sent him the specifics on the shade, he would send us a new spring.

You may recall that we have fixed two of the MCD shades before (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2020/10/repairing-shades.html), in October, 2020 -- including this one. We were actually surprised that the repair worked for as long as it did (3 years) -- gluing two pieces of plastic together that are subjected to a twisting (torsional) stress -- it just didn't seem likely that the repair would last for long.

Carl took the shade down...

... and got on YouTube to find out how to take the shade apart (yes, we did this 3 years ago, but we don't remember!). In fact, the lady that I contacted at MCD 3 years ago sent me links to all the needed videos:

Switch out Spring and Autostop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK84lKUf7nc

Disassemble MCD Shades

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3rVLdIfGBM

Gold Internal Adjustment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDfW0tL-Fto

I'm including them in this post because I'm more likely to find them again by looking up this post if I need to locate the information in the future.

Releasing the end of the shade to be able to get to the insides

Carl got all the information about the spring and shade so we can send it in to MCD.

I have to admit that I'm a little doubtful that they will really replace the spring for free since we called them back 3 years ago and they sent us a price list for the replacement parts -- but, the MCD guy who was at the Newmar Kountry Klub rally said that Carl could email him the information and he would provide the replacement part for free and ship it to us with no charge... so we will see!

In the meantime, we decided to go ahead and glue the spring again -- the repair lasted 3 years last time, if we get that much time from it again, it would be great!

Re-assembling

Installed again -- it is hard to get a picture of it because the head of the shade is way up under the valence box around the window -- but this documents that the shade is re-installed.

I don't think this breakage is due to the rattling of our home down the roads and byways of North America, but rather a poor choice in materials to make parts of the spring out of plastic. With the heat that our windows absorb, the plastic gets brittle, and over time and tension, I guess it is inevitable that it will eventually break. I don't know whether a replacement part would be made out of different materials or not... I would hope they might be, but, even though I think MCD is a good company, I honestly think it is unlikely!