1950's Aluminum Awning - How To Disassemble?

[bananamber]

On my patio I have an aluminum awning that was installed in the late 1950s. It looks exactly like this but much larger: https://superiorawning.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/sa_alumawninggallery18.jpg

I need to temporarily remove a bunch of the vertical slats to make room for a ladder so I can get to my roof. I could just unbolt the entire awning from the house and the support poles, but I'd rather just remove slats if I can. Anyone know how to do this? I tried and I can't figure out how these are assembled.

 

[Snoonyb]

Welcome.
Here are some, general, instruction, which haven't changed much, over the years.

https://www.generalawnings.com/download/AC500_awning_instructions.pdf

 

[bananamber]

Thank you for that manual, it did help me remove the top pans. But I'm now stuck trying to figure out how to remove the bottom pans on my awning. This part is quite different from the one in the manual.

Here's some pics that show how the lower pans are retained.

The members that retain the lower pans span the entire width of the awning. I would assume that if I simply disconnect the valence of a pan from the retainer, I should be able to slide the rest of the pan forward and out? But I can't figure out how to even do that without bending stuff.

 

[Snoonyb]

As I remember, there is some entrepreneurial "squeezing" of the individual pans, and they are relatively easy to "correct", from exuberant "squeezing".

 

[bananamber]

Yeah, I had to squeeze the pans to get them out of the valence retainers. Then I noticed the tabs on the pans at each of the other retainer, bent those in and then bent the ends upward to free them from the mounting bar and they all slid right out. It'd be pretty cool seeing how they used to custom build these awnings back in the late '50s.

Thank you again.

 

[Snoonyb]

Revisiting the 1980's is interesting. The C-THRU was also a product from that era.