Eezi-Awn Bat/Manta/Swift/Lite Awning Mounts

Video Transcript

Hi, this is Paul with Equipt Expedition Outfitters. Today, I would like to talk to you about the best options for mounting the Eezi-Awn Bat 270, Manta 270, Swift, or Light awnings. What's common with all of these awnings is the design of the extrusion on the back of that awning. There is a big aluminum extrusion on the back that holds the bag in place, which holds all of the awning components inside.

On the back of that extrusion are two T-slots designed for an eight-millimeter bolt, and they run horizontally the full length of the awning. This allows you to move those bolts anywhere along that application that suits your needs, whether you're mounting to a roof rack, load bars, or to the side of a trailer or camper. You choose where those locations are along the back of the awning and add some mounts.

The mounts used are what we call a Batmanta Swift Light awning mount. It's two pieces of C-channel mated together. One goes over the top, and a couple of stainless steel bolts hold them together. This allows us to utilize the holes in the back of this C-channel to slide anywhere across the face of the back of the awning. The other bracket is what you mount to whatever surface it might be. It has vertical adjustments so you can adjust height-wise to suit your needs. Once the two pieces are together, one on the awning and one on the surface, you put those together, and that's how you mount the awning onto that surface.

Now, what are our applications, and what can we provide through Eezi-Awn to meet our needs and some of the needs outside of the Eezi-Awn family of products? First, let's talk about the ones we can do for the Eezi-Awn ones. A good majority of the awnings we are putting on K9 racks in this variety of awning utilize one of two brackets.

Let's talk about this first bracket here. This is called the Batmanta Swift awning mount. It's a very strong L-bracket with a diagonal back brace. The reason for this diagonal back brace is because the Bat Manta and Swift awnings are designed with a hinged rafter arm that goes out into place. When those rafter arms go out into place, and you've got all the material of your awning going out into place, that creates a lot of downforce. Gravity comes into play, and you've got a lot of torque on the hinges of that awning and consequently the extrusion that the awning is mounted to.

This awning mount matches the back surface of this awning mount here, allowing you to mount that bracket onto it and adjust it height-wise. This bracket now sits on top of the rack system, allowing the awning to be elevated above the roof rack system for added height if your vehicle's roof is rather low. The other option is to mount it downward, where your bracket goes down, and the diagonal back brace goes between the first slat and the side of the roof rack. This is useful if you're putting a rooftop tent on top of your vehicle and need that extra surface on the side of your roof rack system.

One thing to ensure is that you do not extend this bracket too far forward over the edge of the rack system. If you adjust this too far forward, over time, the bracket will start to torque down with all that torque and begin to bend in this surface. But if your rack is right to the edge, you won't have that problem, and it works out perfectly fine.

This bracket can also be modified to be used on other roof rack surfaces, especially if they're flat-style racks. You might need to adjust some holes to configure to what you have, but you could use this bracket on a series of other flat racks.

In many applications, folks aren't using a roof rack system; they just want an awning on the top of their vehicle. They have a set of load bars or something of that nature. Eezi-Awn has come up with a bracket called the Bat Mantis Swift load bar awning mount. This bracket is a thicker material that utilizes a vertical surface centered on that bracket, with gussets to manage the weight. This allows us to take a load bar and mount this on the end of that load bar for our awning to go into place.

The eight-millimeter T-slots inside the aluminum extrusion of the Eezi-Awn load bar match up with the eight-millimeter slots on the bracket, creating a very strong application for an awning on load bars specifically. This is a very sturdy bracket and will take care of those applications for you.

So there you are, the mounting options, the best options we have for the Eezi-Awn Bat 270, Manta 270, Swift, and Light mounts. I hope this was of help. If not, or you have specific application questions, please let us know at equiptone.com. Thank you.