Whelp, here's the report from Day 1. After looking on the internet for answers, which helped some, but still left me unsure about where to start, I decided to get dirty.
First thing was to get the top up with a dead corner. I parked under a big limb, hooked up my come-a-long and cranked and racheted the thing until it was fully deployed, then set up the trailer and got some air going (cuz it hot in Texas...)
After that I measured and cut 1 X 4's to use as supports near the extension poles (they were about 47.5 inches long)
Next, I took apart the step next to the sink and queen-bed to gain access to the cabling system near the winch. After looking around a bit, I found one of the four 1/4-20 eye hooks had nearly straightened out and the cable had slipped off. I had my daughter crank the winch in the direction to lower the top so I could pull the connection area to where I could work on it, and removed and rebent the eyehook (yeah, may not be the best idea, but wanted to try). I slipped the cable end back on and then cranked it back to near tight. I then noticed that the cables were not equally tensioned, and lo and behold, the tightest one was the one that straightened out. So, after about 6-8 iterations of cranking down, changing eyebolt lengths by adjusting the nuts, and cranking back up again, I finally got the tensioning pretty close I think.
BUT, I have not tested it because it was nearly 10pm when I got done with that, so I'll see if it was truly a success tomorrow. If it works, I'll probably grease the gear a bit, and see if I can find some silicone spray for the poles, and then put everything back together.
Note: When we were stowing the camper to come home, we had a bit more trouble than usual getting the roof to come down evenly. Particularly the last foot or so. We did some pushing down on the corner(s) that were giving us trouble, and I suspect that may have contributed to the straightening out of the eyebolt...
I'll let y'all know what happens tomorrow...
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