Awning Rail Damage

If you have a local caravan repairer they might possibly have a length of the correct profile and with care you could cut out the damaged section and patch a bit in!Otherwise it is a new rail.Do you have caravan insurance?

that's not the question that's being asked by C&S ....

We arrived at a site, having negotiated a fairly narrow and twisty B road, the only way to get there, which was quite busy with transit type work vans and large SUVs, and discovered some offside rear damage to the awning rail along with a small dent in the van side immediately forward of the awning rail.

It is at exactly the height of the large mirrors on these vehicles, there are no scratches so it was something rounded and plastic.  We assume some passing vehicle of this type has clipped the rear corner of the van with their mirror on a bend.  We felt nothing, but the driver of the vehicle must have been aware of  what happened.

The damage is minimal, the small dent and a flattened bit of awning rail, the sealant appears intact.     At our next service we asked our dealer to check that there was no chance of water ingress as inside the van at that point is our shower compartment, so the area cannot be tested for damp.

They took a look and said it looked OK, but that the only way to be 100%  certain was to remove and replace the awning rail.  As these curved rails are almost impossible to remove without getting deformed, they did not want to attempt it as body parts for our 15 year old van are no longer available from Swift.

The damage in the photo is obviously much worse and does need to be sorted, I would be claiming on our insurance, but if it is a van of the same age as ours, a new rail may not be available and the suggestion above may be the only remedy.  Some sort of repair is certainly needed to keep the van watertight.

looking at the pictures again, not that it makes any difference to the potential repair .... it can't be the rear nearside .... must surely the rear offside (ie driver's side) 

Or .... the picture has been flipped