I've been fantasizing about a nylon canopy with folding fiberglass shock cord poles that would attach to the rain gutter on the driver's side and then arch over and attach on the passenger side, for the length of the van....and then have an awning flap for over the passenger/sliding door side wiith folding poles, as well. This would keep the sun off my non-poptop vanagon and stop me from baking like a little apple during summer sunlight hours! When I got the van it had a roof rack that consisted of two pair of gutter attached clamped deals that held two 2x4s up there (it was used to carry a kayak)...I don't kayak, but I left them up there and sewed a couple of 8x20' silver tarps I had together, and then when I arrived at a weeklong campout in treeless sun, I fastened the tarp to those 2x4 ends and got a couple poles to make the 'awning' part stay up...helped a LOT with temp control, but it was a heavy and ug-ly solution! And the Montana wind whipped at it and I think contributed to the rain gutter warp at the roof rack clamp sites :-( (though they could have been warped from 15 years of the kayak going up and down...I never really noticed until I took the whole setup off there.) For us non-camper models, there's gotta be some way to shade the van without carrying our own shade trees! <pout> --Patrice "85 "Vana Blue" |
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