Don't use washing up liquid (that's for checking for gas leaks) or WD40 (that's for the spark plugs) as either may affect the waterproofing of the canvas.
------------- Caz
If you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel, just keep going till you go round the bend.
I got a neat little kit from Towsure which includes lubricant, a little brush to go into the awning channel to clean it, and a widener tool to bend out any damaged sections - it was only cheap - very good.
Do not get awning rail lubricant on the plastic windows and if you do then clean it off immediately. I used it on my awning rail a couple of years ago, put the awning up and missed the fact there there were a couple of splashes of the lubricant on the window. A week later when I pulled the awning down I saw the splashes and cleaned them off only to find that the window underneath had what looked like scratches in the window underneath, I tried to clean them off but only succeeded in putting a quite deep indentation in the plastic. The window had to be replaced to get rid of the deep splits in the exterior plastic.
------------- Bill
For a licence dated 1997 or later you must add together the plated max weight of the caravan and trailer, if the total is 3500 or less you can tow it. You may even tow a caravan with a MAM greater than the cars unladen mass the restriction was removed in 2013
I'm with everyone else furniture polish that has silicon in it
The pound shop sells very large cans of tyre shine and dashboard shine that I would not use on my car but contains a very high amount of silicon, perfect for awnings and very cheap. The cockpit or dashboard spray also smells nice (lemony)
Also use it on the toilet bowl to make it easier to flush everything away. Saves water and emptying as often and the lemony smell is nice....
Furniture polish containing silicone for us - like mentioned it's cheap. For accuracy, we use one of those thin straws you get when you buy those kiddie 'tip top' or 'capri sun' drinks - push it over the hole in the nozzle if you can, and it directs the spray into the rail.
------------- Bringing up baby to be a seasoned caravanner - we bought one to holiday cheaply - working well so far - & caravanners are lovely - helped us on our virgin voyage & our awning!!!
we have used furniture polish beforehand like most have said. But when we put our new to us awning on, we used polish and even after that we found it extremely hard threading it through.
don;t get the furniture polish with Wax in it will build up and make it difficult to thread awning through , As every body else has suggested Cheap polish with silicone in works well,