[Larry & Diane]

Brian: Unfortunately, I experienced the same problem with my CC. I had to remove the valance in order to remove the shade. Considerable PITA.

I went to Home Depot and they were discontinued but the lady that waited on me was an apparent pack rat or previous Prevost bus owner, but she had a drawer full of miscellaneous hardware salvaged from displays etc and she came up with an extra two that I was able to use.

You might pester some of your local window dressing shops and see if you can bum some hardware like I did.

Good Luck.

[Larry]

Brian

There are at least 101 places to buy old window shade parts, just google “window blind parts” and see.

I purchased some brackets for old blinds a couple of years ago for next to nothing. All that old stuff is still available. So, don;t worry if you need to break a bracket or two.

Good luck,

Peter

[Tom]

If they were installed, theoretically they should be removable without breaking anything. At least that is the theory.

Roger’s suggestion about removing the valance sounds like a good one, but I would consider removing the windows.

Just kidding Brian. I have looked at mine and don’t even want to contemplate removing them.

[Charles]

Have you checked this out Brian: FixMyBlinds

I believe Newell used the same blinds, if I had a picture, Tuga or I could post it for you. I know, if you had a picture it would probably be broke and in your hand.

[Brian]

We had to reinstall a Hunter Douglas in our Royale. With a helper we put the blind almost all the way down while one person held the blind away from the window the other person used a long screwdriver and removed the screws that hold the brakects to the upper frame. To remove the valance is a bigger task than we wanted to do one blind.

[Archived]

Thanks for all the suggestions……..well, almost all.

Roger, Jon, removing the valences in the Royale would be a royal PIA. Larry, I finally came to the same conclusion, with the shades all the way down you can just wiggle a skinny phillips screwdriver on to the screws. I think the brackets will need to be shortened and plywood doublers installed so the shades can be re-located as close to the window as possible. This will give enough space between the shade and the valence for the shade to slide back on the brackets for re-installation.

Royale has been out of business for a long time now but our bus was produced as a Monoco subsidiary. Shame on the shop managers be they Royale or Monaco for allowing such a stupid installation sequence to be used as SOP.

[Glenn]

At one time in a previous life I designed products. One of the things required as part of the process of putting a new product into production was an analysis of how to service the product. Assembling the product in a factory environment was a whole lot different than accessing the same parts when the product is fully assembled and a hidden part needs to be replaced or repaired.

We learned a couple of life’s lessons from that. First, no matter what assembly methods we used in production, field service had to be done with readily available or common tools. If you ever watch service work on a conversion the chances are very good that the techs will have created special tools for certain repairs. If you do your own repairs you probably need to consider the tools you own may not be the tools you need. You might have to get creative.

Additionally, across the board I believe regardless of convertter I believe there is a higher priority on appearance than there is on service access. I cannot speak about all conversions, but the ones I have seen up close, very little thought was given to access, but a whole lot of thought was given to concealing fasteners and making something look attractive.

Finally, there are going to be tricks of the trade. Once you know them, a task that seems difficult or impossible becomes relatively easy. On my 97 coach for example I could service just about anything in the water bay, but if I wanted to make things easier I would not hesitate to pull the water tank allowing me complete access to everything with ease. I had tank removal down to a science and it took longer to drain than it took for me to pull it.

I have poked my nose in a lot of things on my coaches and been a sidewalk superintendent on other folk’s coaches and while some jobs were difficult they were all doable. The same applies to chassis repairs, all except for the part where access to the top of the engine in some coaches approaches impossible.

[John]

I have the same on my 99 CC and had one with broken pull strings. I too could not get a phillips screw driver on the screw. Even with a flex shaft I couldn’t do it because I couldn’t get the other hand on the shaft to guide the drive. What I discovered is that with some pressure, in or out (I don’t remember), I could get the blind down. I did the same when reinstalling and it worked. It did take a few minutes, but did work without breaking.