I finally got the darn thing restrung and reassembled, with all plastic guides in place and all strings free to move, made a replacement for the lost end cap out of wood, and then hung the whole assembly with three screws inside the valence with help from my son. Tip: The whole thing needs to hang down loose, not bundled/tied, while you install the top mounting screws though the top rail, then pull the strings snug, leave some free string, tie them on the adjustment wheels and screw the wheels into the sides of the valences. Finally wind the adjustment wheels until the strings are quite taught and tighten the screws more to hold the adjustment. Strings should almost "twang". The repaired shade works as good as new, may have to re-adjust tightness of strings a little if they stretch. Yahoo! When day/night shades work properly, they're quite nice. Be careful to raise and lower both sides evenly and gradually, the day part is flimsy and can rip. Tip: First Aid kit comes with very long cords that drove me crazy during restringing exercise. If you can figure our approximately how long they need to be with all of the criss/crossing and leaving some extra, cut them off. Left overs might be long enough to restring a small side or rear window shade.
* This post was
edited 03/28/12 06:15pm by Bordercollie *
We have just the one-way (night) type of shade in our rig, but the process for re-stringing is similar. We tackled two of them last year and documented the process on the first one. You can find our pictures and instructions here.
Good luck. The first one took quite a while; the second one was a breeze.
Most of those shades come from http://irvineshadeanddoor.net/ Elkhart, Id. There is usually a sticker on the bottom of the shade with phone#. They will restring your shade for $15.00 if you pay freight both ways or will sell you a kit for restringing. I sent a very long shade to them and with packaging and shipping the total was almost $130.00 from the west coast. I used the WX Toad info to reinstall. Next time I will just by the kit.
Joe Hamm-2003 Lazy Daze
A small two-string shade is less unwieldy to work on and less complex string wise. Might help to take digital pics or draw pictures during disassembly. Measure intact old strings and cut new strings to same length plus one foot, strings in CW's First Aid Kit are very long and get tangled, etc. You need a large flat working space like on a bed.I made a "needle" out of a thin steel wire with a thin eye in one end to thread string through holes and guides in shades. Keep the little plastic guides in place. I taped the shades closed during passing the strings through, took tape off and let shades hang loose to allow screwing top rail in place. Make sure all strings are free to move/not snagged when sliding extruded rails back in place. Sharp edges of extrusion can snag and rip flimsy day shade material, be careful sliding them back on. Maybe restringing the next ones will be "fun". Nice to be able to raise them and open sliding windows and lower them for privacy.
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