Welcome to the Aliner Club forum. This forum provides a wide variety of features to enhance its usefulness. Please make use of them. There are currently two databases in the "Database" section. One is where members can enter information about their tow vehicles. This will help to provide a practical guide for those who are interested in Aliners and want to know if their tow vehicle is practical. The second database is for dry wieghts. Here owners can enter information about the configuration of their Aliners and the dry weights for that configuration. This will help those buying for the first time, or looking to trade up, decide if their trailer will match the tow vehicle. Enjoy!

wrote: Long anwer and maybe stuff you know, but... It is not a normal car battery in the Aliner. The battery box for the Aliners accepts a Group 27 deep cycle (or marine) battery. These provide between 105 - 120 Amp Hours. Since you don't want to drain deep cycle batteries below 50%, to prevent shortening their life, you really have 55-60 Amp Hours of useable power. Costco sells a "wet" (lead acid) 120 AH Group 27 battery under their "Kirkland" brand for $65. It has a three year pro-rated warranty. You may be able to go with a larger battery such as a Group 4D (165 amp hour) or Group 8D (210 amp hour). You will need to find the space for new boxes and be handy with re-routing wiring. Best to see if the factory might be willing to do some customizing of your order. More important, you have to be able to recharge that battery in a reasonable time to make it worth while. A 210 AH Group 8D AGM battery (Lifeline is one brand) battery will run you about $400-$500 and last about 6 years. It also weighs about 140 lbs and is 21 inches long. Figure what your power needs are for a 24 hour period. Someone correct me if I am wrong here: The standard charger built into the Aliner was not designed to handle high Amp bulk recharges (like a TrueCharge +40 charger). I think it recharges at 20 amps max. This means that it will take longer for a larger battery to recharge. Any power used in the trailer when plugged in into shore power is power not available for recharging. Charging via the tow vehicle: Car and trailer batteries are essentially tied together if you have battery charge wire going to the trailer (your typical 7 plug Bargman RV connector). When stopped with the engine turned off, they will act as water tanks connected by a pipe and try to balance each other out. The battery with the lower charge taking power from the one with the higher charge. If you have a large enough AH rated trailer battery, you could theoretically kill your starting battery. Yes, you could disconnect the RV plug when you stop, but I know I will forget to reconnect it some time and drive away without brakes or lights available. This is why battery isolators are installed - so batteries are disconnected when a tow vehicle is turned off. To recharge a battery in the 200 AH range by driving and using the tow vehicle alternator will require thought, planning, and/or time. Oversizing the alternator will not cause the trailer battery to recharge faster. Alternators sense the voltage level of the starter battery and are designed not to exceed 14v so as to protect the starting battery from bubbling and gassing. Once that 14 volts is sensed the alternator's regulator drops the voltage and amps output. A car battery isn't discharged beyond 5% of it's capacity, so the recharge is quick and the alternator output drops within minutes after starting the car. A 200 Amp hour trailer battery needing 100 AH replaced each day will require lots of hours of driving to recharge. One solution is to have a manual "cut out" switch in the car which removes the car battery from the circuit. You would flip this switch when the starting battery is fully recharged. The alternator would then only sense the trailer battery and spin up the voltage and amps to recharge it. You need a large enough alternator so it can handle the car's electrical loads and recharging and not burn out. Another option may be to install a dual output alternator. These have two sets of leads. One set of leads for the car battery and a second set of leads for the trailer battery. The voltage regulator in the alternator senses which battery has a lower load and sends power to it. It does not balance power between them (20% to this and 80% to that). It just sends power to the lowest load. These types of alternators have built in battery isolators. Again the alternator needs to be large enough to handle the vehicle electrical loads and recharging. Hope this is of some help. Chris M.

--- garyk_52 <garyk_52@...> wrote: Hello Fellow A-framer > I recently purchased a Chalet Arrowhead and installed brakes on the outfit. The task was straightforward and no more diffcult than doing rear brakes on a Chevy. I purchased the necessary items as a kit from Profile Trailers:(www.profile trailers.com) Installation of the parts presented no problems other than the wrong lock washers included (to bolt the backing plates to the axel flanges). A trip to the hardware store was all it took. Also a grease seal and breakaway switch was damaged during shipment. Rather than wait for replacements I simply went to an RV service center and bought the necessary parts for a total of $11.00. The damaged items were returned to Profile Trailers and I was reimbursed. Determine if your rig has backing plate flanges welded on the axel -- I understand that A-liner has them. Remove the hubs from your trailer and be very careful about keeping the bearings clean. You will reuse (if you wish) the present inner and outer bearings -- new races are already in the brake drums/hubs you are about to install. You may decide to purchase and install new bearings -- your choice. Mine had little use and were in like new condition so I decided to reuse them. Remove the grease seals and discard (you will install new ones) Clean and repack your bearings and set them aside on a clean lint free surface.You should also remove any remaining grease on your axel shaft -- replace it with new of the same brand wheel bearing grease you used to repack the bearings. Time to bolt the brakes to the axel flanges. This is self explanatory, just make sure you do not pinch the magnet wires between the flange and backing plate. Also -- make sure you place each unit on the correct side (they are labeled left and right side). When you are done it is time to complete the wiring. Wiring the brakes to the electrical connector was a breeze. Chalet has the wire already in place and all I had to do was connect the wires from the brakes to "the blue wire which is found near the converter. That bit of useful information was graciously provided to me By Mr.Borchard of Chalet Trailers, I suspect it will be the same on an A-liner. Also, on the Chalet, you will find a wire run (internaly) from one side of the axel to the other. It is doubled -- with one wire just plain brown and the other brown with a black stripe.Use that wire to connect the passenger side brake to the driver's side brake. The brake magnets are non-polarized so they really don't care which one you decide to use for the magnets or which one you decide to use for the ground. I connected the plain wire to both brakes and used the brown/black stripe wire to go to ground. Dexter (the brake manufacturer) prefers that you connect to a common ground at the frame near the front. I did that and (as a safety measure) also made another common ground connection to the frame near the center of the trailer. Routing of the wires is your decision. Just make sure they are in no danger of damage from weather, flying debris or corrosion. All connecting hardware including bolts and ring terminals was purchased from a marine hardware store --stainless bolts and corrosion resistant terminals. Any connections near the brakes were soldered using rosin core solder then properly insulated. To mount the breakaway switch, I drilled and tapped a 1/4+20 hole on the tongue, using the jockey wheel mount for double thickness. You can drill and tapp most anywhere, this seemed most convenient for me. Follow the wiring diagram that comes with the breakaway switch and use your trailer battery as a power source. Adjust the brakes same as you would any other Bendix outfit. Keep the trailer up on jackstands as per your manufacturer's instructions. Check the breakaway switch operation by pulling the pin and trying to turn a wheel. If all is well, the wheel will not move. If all is not well, go back and recheck your work (adjustments,electrical connections, and wiring diagram. Check both wheels! Replace the pin. Connect to the tow vehicle electrical system an

Hi All- Added some more photos to the photo page with shower, cat box, folding dinette table, and more electric stuff. My wife and I travel often to music conventions - she is a college music professor - and this is our "motel" for that. Summers we take long trips from here in southern California to points east and north, visiting family and friends. The last 3 1/2 years we have been to all the lower tier of Canadian provinces, from BC to NF, as well as many of the east coast states and most of those between here and there. On the road we tend to travel 400-600 miles a day, usually not stopping until about 8-9PM, so we set up in the dark mostly. We seek out remote camping areas if we can, and try to be really quiet when setting up. The Chalet takes only about 3 minutes to set up, stabilize, and light water heater and 'fridge. Guess we're not the "sit around the campfire" types. After we retire, this may change... Our '94 Plymouth Grand Voyager AWD 3.8L gets about 17-18 MPG towing our somewhat bloated Chalet (must weigh it sometime), has 113,000 miles on it and is still going strong. In making the modifications, I made many drawings to fit things in, as well as weight and balance calculations. The battery bank (as close to the axle as I could manage and directly over a spring hanger) may look out of place but its 260 pounds is mostly offset by the fresh water tank (125 lbs), water heater (70 lbs), and 'fridge (50lbs) on the opposite side of the trailer. The front A/C unit offsets the removed original battery weight (was forward of toilet). The gray water tank and fresh water tank are next to each other so moving water from one to the other doesn't affect the tongue weight. The tongue is still a little heavy from dual LP tanks but mounting a Honda EU2000i in an enclosure on the back bumper should help. We'll see. I'm not sure what I would do if the Chalet project list ever reached an end. -Jay (and Anita) Hanawalt 18 lb Lewis and 9 lb "bell", our travel cats 1998 Chalet Alpine ++

Hi Jim- We had a small '85 Coleman one bed tent trailer before the Chalet. I tried all sorts of things to rig a shower, none entirely satisfactory, and always a lot of work to set up and take down. This setup works fine. I have a small pump above the floor near the water heater (so it won't freeze) to suck out the shower pan and dump it in the grey water tank, and a rocker switch next to the shower hose connection to run it. I have a small screw top screen type filter before the pump to keep junk out of it. Since I store the shower hose there too, I sluice off the screen in the sink (some sand and debris usually) as part of closing up the shower. All told it takes about a minute to set up and a minute to put away. -Jay wrote:

--- In alinerchaleta-frames@y..., "pre64winchester" <bbaile@s...> at want #8 is good for 50 Amps but a more realistic fuse would be a 30 Amp dual blade automotive fuse in a water tight holder. These are available from any automotive store and are relatively small. A diode type isolator contains two large diodes (electrical one way valves), one to feed alternator current to the vehicle battery and the other to feed alternator current to the trailer battery. Since it has to be installed between the alternator and the Explorer's battery, it has to be under the hood. Diodes are not lossless devices; they typically have up to 1 volt drop at high current resulting in heat generation of about 1 Watt per Amp so the isolator housing can get quite hot and is fairly large to dissapate the heat into the surrounding air. I haven't an Explorer to examine but you may have your work cut out for you trying to fit an isolator in there. Another approach is to install a relay (electrically remotely operated switch) between the alternator and the wire to the trailer battery, operated by either the ignition switch or a separate switch inside the car, so that it only connects the trailer when the engine is running. The relay would be much smaller than a diode type isolator, much less heat (only a couple of Watts for the coil), and almost no voltage loss. The relay COULD be installed anywhere in the wire to the trailer but, since it also needs a wire to tell it when to turn on, it is best installed somewhere in the engine compartment. Altogether a smaller and simpler installation. One problem with charging a trailer battery from the car is that lead-acid battery chemistry is temperature sensitive, requiring about 1 volt less charging voltage at 125F than at 70F. Most automotive voltage regulators sense the underhood temperature and reduce the alternator voltage as the engine compartment warms up to avoid overcharging and damaging the car battery. The reduced voltage from the alternator, added to the voltage lost in the resistance of the wire from the alternator to the trailer battery (larger wire is better!), results in the cooler trailer battery not being recharged to the extent one might hope. -Jay

Hi Red, Another voice to be heard regarding winterizing. The extra work effort to expel water from the hot water system is worth it. Remember to release the pressure valve first. Having done it, I not only have piece of mind but I can also judge how much material is left to do the job that the anode rod is supposed to do. I have a replacement ready to put in about March 1st when I will be using it once again. Plus you might want to twist open the water filter unit to clean the mesh filter if dirt has been trapped. While you're at it, look at the clear plastic water lines. A bit of "slime" clouds the inside, and may create a place for bacteria to grow. Do the usual mix of Clorox and water not only inside the tank but the lines also. George, LXE '99

<Also, regarding the broken springs- This is a common occurance in areas with rough roads.> On my trip to Alaska, I heard this often as a common occurrence traveling many of the gravel or rougher roads through BC, the Yukon, and in Alaska... Some 5th wheels that tended to be loaded heavily experienced this problem and there were also some broken axels from some of the roads... Having taken my Aliner over the roughest of these roads with the rubber torsion axels (if I said that right) and having no problems, I can testify to their value on these type roads, as well as the 14" radial tires that performed well in these same conditions... I saw a brand new Airstream coming off the Dempster highway (400 mile gravel road to Inuvik, NWT, from Dawson City) that had two flat tires and damage to some gas pipes running under the trailer during the trip... The owner told me he was traveling at 50 to 55mph on the "good" gravel road, which in my mind was too fast pulling a large trailer like that.... I also think they were loaded heavily.. Bob Hoffmann

You will probably find that your lighting is adequate. We have a 2000 Expedition with a two-light fixture on each roof panel. My wife thought that it was too bright so we removed one bulb from each fixture. Of course, they are easy to reinsert if we want it brighter for some reason. --- Bill Gee <bgee@...> wrote: __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Sports - sign up for Fantasy Baseball http://sports.yahoo.com

There have been one or two posts regarding soft floors on Aliner LXE trailers due to possible water damage. This may not be water damage at all, but simply an issue with the steel frame under the trailer. All the comments seem to refer to the floor being soft in the front of the trailer. I wanted to share my experience with our LX and see if what folks are talking about is similar. We have an LX with an open walkway to the front of the trailer. When I walk up to the front wall, I feel the floor in the center of the trailer flex under my weight. The back of the trailer where the sofa is does not due this. Our trailer is a 2002 model and the floor has not been exposed to water, so we are not talking about a rotting floor. What causes the flex? If you look under the standard Aliner (yup, crawl down into the dirt), you will see that there is a series of "L" shaped steel supports that have been welded between the box tube frame. The floor sits on all this. However, the "L" supports do not exist from the front of the trailer to about 1 foot before the door. They are also missing at the back end of the trailer. Divid the floor into thirds. The "L" supports are only in the center 1/3 of the trailer - not the front 1/3 or the back 1/3. The box tube framing runs the full length of the floor. On our trailer the sofa is mounted across the middle of the rear 1/3 area that does not have support underneath. The wooden frame of the sofa runs the width of the trailer and is screwed to the floor. I think this is acting as a cross support. When a 160 lb person walks on the floor in front area that does not have the "L" supports the floor flexes. However, if they go back to the where the sofa is, even though they are still standing on a area with no supports underneath - the floor will not flex. I don't think the floors are going soft due to water. I think what LXE & LX owners are seeing is that there is a difference in support structure of the floor. The sofa frame in the back is acting as a cross member support since it is screwed to the floor. This does not exist way up front, so the center can flex. You won't break through, and it won't crack - it's made to flex to some degree (engineers call it dynamic versus static loads for flooring and joists or live versus dead loads). Since you spend relatively very little time way up in the front of the LX & LXE hunched over, the floor won't have a lot of stress. But the center and rear areas will. This could be why front Dinette or front storage dinette folks never complain about soft floors - because the framing for front sofa and storage models are also screwed into the floor and act as a support. That is what I would recommend checking. Are people talking about bounce or flex, or about soft spongy wood that has swelled and become thicker (like partical board when wet)? If it is just floor flex, then you should be able to talk to a shop about weld an "L" shaped support across the width of the trailer between the box tube frame. This should stop the flex, and be very easy to do. Be aware that it would add some weight to the trailer. Enjoy, Chris

I have an Aliner that I pull with a Ford Ranger 2 wheel drive. I have had the trailer for only a week and I have a problem cranking the shaft high enough to put the front wheel on when I want to unhitch the trailer even on flat ground. I have a class 2 hitch. Is there anouther ball fitting to elevate the trailer some? Thanks

First off, thank you all for posting about those hobby lights!!! Our Aliner came standard with two single fixture lights (one front and one back). For us these provide plenty of light given the size of the trailer. However, they are more bright when running off of A/C (shore power), than when running off of a battery. Something to keep in mind is that bulbs like this are not very efficient. They consume more amps than a halogen bulb because it takes more wattage to get the same brightness (lumens? candle power?) as a halogen. If you are redoing your fixtures, look into the 12v under the cabinet track lighting used in kitchens. This isn't regular track lighting for rooms, but small ones made for under kitchen cabinets, or in display cases. These come in different styles and wattages. A halogen light will provide brighter more intense light in a lower wattage, thus saving you amps and battery power. By having a track feature, you can slide the light to the location it's needed (reading, showering, cooking). By putting different wattages in fixtures at different locations, you can have an area spot lit for reading, but a softer glow across the whole width. The only disadvantage to this is that you need to make sure the fixtures don't hit the side walls when folded down. You can either move them all to the center (where the regular lights are) or you could remove them from the track. Just another idea. Enjoy, Chris

Aliner sells a replacement jack that will bolt into predrilled holes. The jack can be removed for travel. It has been great as the jack is not there to drag on low driveways at service stations and other such places. The original jack was too low with the trailer in a level position. I bought sleeping pads made by Coleman to place on the coushions. They seem to add the needed density needed for my 200 or so lbs. I seem to place on them. Works good and at this time I will probably not upgrade the foam. My Sweetie and i took a five week trip a couple of summers ago and the pads worked fine. They also store under the coushions when the beds are used as seats. Cheap fix. Ted

Folks with Prodigy controllers, what did you end up setting your voltage levels to during the calibration period? Been meaning to ask this for a while because with our 7" brakes and towing with a Suburban, we could not get the 7" brakes to lock up as mentioned in the Prodigy manual (yes, they could need adjusting). Ran them all the way up to 13 volts and they still wouldn't lock. I finally ended up setting the level to about 6 or 6.5 volts because that's the point where all the horrible noises from the brakes stopped. Once set, the actual braking voltage peaks at about 2 volts. Just wondering what other people did, and if others have had any luck getting their 7" brakes to lock the wheels. Enjoy, Chris

parshal wrote: That's a difficult question to answer since our usage is probably different than yours, and it depends on the time of year, type of camping, etc. If all that is being used is lights for a few hours at night, it would go 40 days. In our case, the usual load is lights at night (10Ah), CPAP machine/humidifier all night (25Ah), FanTastic fan or furnace part of the day and night (15-40Ah), toaster and coffee maker in the morning (20Ah), and water pump for shower (.5Ah), very roughly 70-100Ah or so a day. Since the total capacity of the bank is 440Ah, we could go at least 4 days. We normally don't stay anywhere that long so the battery gets recharged more often. There are times, though, when we are stopped for the night in a hot, humid area. Then we run the air conditioner (~50A with compressor engaged, 8A with compressor cycled off) from the battery all night, and the battery bank can be drawn down pretty deeply by morning. In the past, more than one hot night required that we have shore power. Now that we have a EU2000i generator that easily drives both the air conditioner and the Trace inverter to its full 70A charge capability, we still plan to run the air conditioner from the battery at night so as to not disturb others, but we will be able to recharge even a fully depleted battery bank in less than 7 hours. Running the battery clear down is hard on it, though, and we normally try to avoid more than a 50% depth of discharge. -Jay (radiocatus)

Generators used to charge batteries: the most efficient generator to charge batteries is one that uses a automotive or similar type alternator to produce DC directly. Feather River Solar Electric (http://www.psln.com/frenergy/index.html) is one outfit that builds these, but they are not intended to be portable, or particularly quiet. Epower (http://www.epowerchargerboosters.com) makes portable units but these wouldn't be too quiet either. With a few exceptions mentioned later, using an AC generator to power a battery charger is inefficient of fuel and space. Most lower cost battery chargers use a transformer/rectifier circuit to produce the 14 VDC necessary to charge a "12 Volt" battery. Because 120VAC is a "sine" wave, only the peaks of the waveform are at a high enough voltage to produce charge current, and then it is a relatively high current for a short time, until the waveform drops on its path toward the other polarity. To produce an average of, say, 20 Amps of charge, the peak current might be two or more times that. Most small generators are not capable of the high peak currents necessary unless the charger is very much smaller than the generator would seem to be capable of running. My Trace DR1512 1500W inverter has a 70 Amp charge capability, which would translate to requiring about 1100W of power. Testing has shown that, depending on the quality of generator, it can require up to a 6,000W generator to drive it to the full 70A output, because on smaller units the waveform "flat tops" under this sort of load. One exception, I am glad to report, is the Honda "Inverter" series of generators. These use a permanent magnet multipole generator to produce a DC voltage over 200VDC, which is then pulse-width modulated in a high frequency inverter to produce a very high quality sine wave. The output voltage and frequency are set by a crystal controlled microcomputer and are independent of the generator engine speed (which is also computer controlled). The output of the inverter is monitored many times during each cycle of the sine wave and the modulator adjusted to maintain a clean waveform. There may be other "inverter" generators out there but I have not had any experience with them. My EU2000i is able to easily drive my inverter to the full 70 Amps charge at 14.6 volts while barely rising above its idle speed. It is able to maintain this charge rate even while simultaneously operating my 5000 BTU air conditioner, and, although it does speed up some, it still has some capacity in reserve. The EU2000i can even drive my Trace SW4024 inverter (for my house) to 60 Amps charge at 28.5VDC, but it works pretty hard. Some newer higher cost "switching" type chargers, such as the TrueCharge, utilize this same sort of high frequency inverter circuit, and are able to produce full output on smaller generators. Only testing with each particular generator/charger combination will show for sure what it is capable of. I don't work for Honda, or Xantrex (Statpower, Trace, etc.), but I have, for over 20 years, installed and maintained mountain top transmitter sites with generators from 4kW to 400kW, battery banks of 12, 24, and 48VDC, and chargers from 2 Amps to 250 Amps, so I have had the chance to experiment that most folks don't get. -Jay

jimqpublic90807 wrote: Jim- My tank is 30x21x12, with a cutback under one end so the dump valve and elbow down through the floor don't extend past the 30" length of the tank, and just enough room on top to install an elbow for a vent line. I ordered it through my local RV parts house, Arrow in Ontario, CA, who got it through Stag Parkway, a wholesale RV parts distributer in San Bernardino. I don't know who actually made it. Arrow had a flyer with scads of tanks and I finally picked out this one. I ordered the fittings through the Arrow catalog, which I think is actually Stag Parkway's, rebranded. Got it in a few days. The tank was made to hang from the top edges so I built a framework from 1x2 and paneling to support the edges, and then shot expandable building foam underneath the tank to make a solid bed for the rounded bottom of the tank to rest in. No problems or leaks in 4 years/30,000 miles. http://www.all-rite.com has lots of tanks, fresh and waste, on line, but doesn't list the exact one I have. They claim to also make custom ones. I might look into having them build a fresh water tank that used more of the available space - ought to be able to get at least 20 gallons in there. But it wouldn't be cheap... -Jay

easy3214u wrote: Hi Kim- A few questions so we don't make wrong assumptions: What mfg and size (BTU) AC unit do you have? What mfg and model converter do you have? What battery setup do you have (1, 2, or more, or maybe golf cart batteries)? How long at a time do you plan to stay in a primative site? There are a lot of different setups out there, even amongst just Aliner and Chalet units. There is quite a lot of information in the recent archives of this list on this subject, maybe more than can be digested. The above questions will help narrow down the answers you receive to that which may apply directly to your situation. And you will receive answers; there are several of us on this list that will, at the drop of a hat, tell you more about generators and batteries than maybe you ever wanted to know. Too much information can be as much of a problem as not enough... -Jay

This weekend was the first weekend to use everything on the camper. We used the hot water heater, water pump, shower, fridge on gas. Everything worked very well. I was wondering if anyone has come up with some good covers for the cushions. We have dogs and end up covering the cushions with an old blanket and then putting our sleeping bags over that. This way, we don't have as much dog hair all over the cushions. This is a somewhat time consuming way to deal with when we change the beds back to the table and couch. Any ideas? Coming back down I-70 I hit a pothole on the drivers' side and then the camper tire hit it (you should have seen it bounce!). About 15 miles later I could see the trailer leaning the left in the rearview mirror. I stopped and looked it over, bounced the trailer and could find nothing wrong. When I got home I looked at the leaf springs and the drivers' side spring has lost some of it's arc although there's no visible crack . I measured the distance to the ground behind each tire and the driver's side is 1 1/2 inches lower. The dealer is 45 minutes away I certainly hope this isn't a long, painful experience.

rollercoaster_guy wrote: My '98 Chalet is outside and up all the time and the sun baked the bungie cords until the rubber strands inside started breaking, so I changed mine a couple of years ago. The ends that are part way down the rear top section are held on with a couple of screws each through the middle. No problem. As I remember it, the other ends, the ones at the top edge, were clamped and RTV'd under a 1" square formed plate with a screw through it. Had to remove the screw, cut the old RTV away, and remove the old bungie. Start the screw and plate until there is a 3/8" or so gap, wrap the end of the new bungie around the screw between the plate and the roof end, squirt in some RTV, and tighten the screw the rest of the way, squeezing the bungie and RTV. Wipe off the excess RTV. Do the top ends first. I had to do them a couple of times because I had done the lower ends first and didn't have enough hands to hold, wrap, and screw. An extra person, or maybe a clamp of some kind, to hold the bungie in place really helps. I don't know if the bungie mounting has changed since '98 or not. I have contemplated replaceing the bungies with long narrow coil springs, like screen door springs, but haven't found narrow enough ones to fit between the roof sections when folded. I would probably use short pieces of nylon webbing at each end to allow for folding. Maybe some day I'll pursue it further, but the bungie works fine. -Jay