Roller Blinds for 5th wheel

[GMH]

We are about to replace the factory pleated blinds in our 2010 Cougar 5th wheel. We have gotten 4 quotes and I thought I asked for the same cordless spring loaded old style roller blinds from everyone. We were about to order them from the lowest bidder (not that it was the most important factor) but then he said they were corded and they were cheaper than cordless. I had thought the opposite would be true, but now it makes sense. Has anyone had any bad experiences with either style?
Thanks in advance. Greg.

[sourdough]

I've had pleated, corded blinds in my home (of various iterations) for 30 years and never had a failure. I have had corded slat blinds in 2 RVs without a failure. I've had this RV for a year and had 2 spring loaded blind failures......

[chuckster57]

Originally Posted by sourdough

I've had pleated, corded blinds in my home (of various iterations) for 30 years and never had a failure. I have had corded slat blinds in 2 RVs without a failure. I've had this RV for a year and had 2 spring loaded blind failures......

Having spring loaded blinds would have me walking away from a potential purchase. MCD has the highest failure rate that I have seen. I’ll stay with pleated thank you very much. You can get them in day/night.

[RickV]

I always hated the pleated type of blinds because they invariably would end not doing the accordion thing when you closed em. Used to spray em with spray starch and that helped for a while but, eventually they'd start messing up again. On our last 5ver replaced em all with roll ups ordered em from a company called blindster. They were all corded except for one (don't remember why we got one uncorded). They were a great improvement over the paper accordion ones.

[ChuckS]

The main reason MCD blinds fail is folks tow with the blinds pulled down.. The weight of the blind is constantly yanking against the little plastic brake stop wheel mounted inside the blind tube...

It is a simple fix if the little tabs on the brake stop wheel are worn down because of towing with blinds down...

[notanlines]

We have 4 years on our 13 MCD spring-loaded with no failures. We had them in the Raptor also and no failures. We had the day/night pleated in our old Hi-Low and had no failures, but did have to restring a couple, simply aged out. Just another opinion.

[GMH]

Thanks for the input folks. We have ordered the corded ones. I will let you know my opinion of them when they arrive.

[GMH]

. Well the DW and I installed the roller blinds yesterday and today. It is 33 degrees C here, so we had our Honda generator running the AC while we worked. It ran out of fuel just as We were finishing (good omen I thought)! Thankfully the new storeage compound we are in has no issues with us working on it.
. Installation went well and we really like the looks of them and they operate very nicely. It will be a delight to be able to raise them all the way up anytime we want to. They have a beaded chain for raising and lowering. We will be likely travelling with them in the raised position, as there is nothing to keep the bottom from swaying.
. The original curtain rods that the valence/curtains were mounted on were not deep enough to clear the new rollers. I went to HD to buy one that I could cut up to extend the legs on them and was pleasantly surprised to find a dual set on sale that had deeper ones that would clear them.

[RickV]

We traveled with ours up for that reason.

[chuckster57]

Originally Posted by ChuckS

The main reason MCD blinds fail is folks tow with the blinds pulled down.. The weight of the blind is constantly yanking against the little plastic brake stop wheel mounted inside the blind tube...

It is a simple fix if the little tabs on the brake stop wheel are worn down because of towing with blinds down...

Thank you for posting that link.

[ChuckS]

Originally Posted by chuckster57

Thank you for posting that link.

Hope it helps those with MCD roll up shades.. my 2014 Alpine has them .. I had one film and we found it fully unwound when we arrived at a destination back in 2014..

Spoke with a fella at MCD and he told me what had failed, asked me if I was towing with the blinds down (which I was) and explained how to fix the plastic brake wheel inside..

Used my soldering iron and touched the plastic wheel edge at 3 spots to form new indentations and plastic rises above the indentation.

It’s now 2021 and have never had any further issues and the one O repaired back in 2014 still works like new

[Javi]

Originally Posted by ChuckS

Hope it helps those with MCD roll up shades.. my 2014 Alpine has them .. I had one film and we found it fully unwound when we arrived at a destination back in 2014..

Spoke with a fella at MCD and he told me what had failed, asked me if I was towing with the blinds down (which I was) and explained how to fix the plastic brake wheel inside..

Used my soldering iron and touched the plastic wheel edge at 3 spots to form new indentations and plastic rises above the indentation.

It’s now 2021 and have never had any further issues and the one O repaired back in 2014 still works like new

The only one I have trouble with is the large one on the rear picture window and it will roll up when we hit a big whoopee-do otherwise not so much.

[GMH]

They all installed very easily. I was lucky enough to stumble upon “dual” curtain rods at HD. The outer ones are deeper and allowed me to re-use the original valences and curtains.