[RockyMtnRay]

Whoh Ray, be very careful of the placement, you WILL have to adjust your torsion springs by adding them, if too heavy, might have to buy all new ones as I was told by Jimmy Davis at the TM plant when I was considering adding roof air.

Already ahead of you there, HT. When my dealer installed an awning this spring, they found the existing torsion bars couldn't be adjusted enough to handle the extra weight. So they went ahead and put in the heavy-duty bars and I now have a heckuva lot of torsion adjustment available.

I would suggest before you glue them down, do your best to distribute the weight equally, and try opening and closing the top and see how it goes, never mind if it gets hard to open for the extra weight, that can be adjusted later, just make sure it opens up SMOOTHLY.....without rubbing or "gallywhumping".

Well, as noted above, I'm certainly not going to permanently attach the panels until I'm satisfied with both the panel position and torsion adjustments (will use duct tape to temporarily mount them). There are pros and cons to both center mounting the panels and side mounting them. Center mounting will balance the weight between the two sides...but since the awning is one side only (and weighs a lot more), that is not necessarily required. Side mounting will allow me to use the top of wall aluminum structural tube with screws (vs adhesive)...and it will help the overall side to side weight balance of my TM (my street side weighs nearly 200 lbs more than my curb side because all the water tanks are on the street side). I will discuss this issue with Jimmy Davis before finally settling on a location. At the moment though, I'm leaning toward mounting them along the curb side right next to the awning and adjusting the tornsion bars as needed to balance the weight.

Next, may I suggest "Gorrilla Glue" as an adhesive? You can seal them with silicon still, or whatever ya want, but that stuff is rock solid, and won't give.....no matter what, and if ANYONE in this room knows a way of removing it in any way, PLEASE let me know,

I spent nearly all of this past weekend researching structural adhesives and found that Loctite Corp's website had a treasure trove of information...see http://www.loctite.com/literature/. A lot of it is pretty technical but since I have a Masters Degree in Chemistry I found it as fascinating as a great novel....but the phrase "Your Mileage May Vary" might apply for other people.

To make a very long story short, there are basically 4 or 5 classes of applicable adhesives...epoxies & urethanes, 2 part-no mix acrylates, silicones, and cyanoacrylates. Only the epoxies, urethanes, and 2-part acrylates have the sheer strength, weather resistance, peel resistance, etc. to be suitable for attaching solar panels to the roof of the TM.

Gorilla Glue is a urethane class adhesive. As you note, urethane adhesives are (or can be) extremely strong. However, the "curing" process of urethane adhesives is dependent on moisture diffusing through the polymer. For you in pretty darn soggy Virginia this is not going to be a problem as you have lots and lots of atmospheric moisture nearly all the time. For me in typically arid Colorado (relative humidities often way below 10%), this could be a very big problem and there's a distinct possibility that Gorilla Glue would not form a strong bond here. I'm not sure if they even sell the stuff hereabouts.

As Larry notes (and was confirmed by the Loctite literature), epoxies are not very tolerant of temperatures over 140 F...and on a hot, sunny day the roof of the TM is quite likely to exceed that.

Soooo, I'm currently focused on the 2-part acrylates like Loctite Depend. This class of adhesive is extremely strong (2000 to 3000 lb/sq inch sheer strength) and is very heat tolerant (at least 260 degrees). It's also tolerant of uneven bond gaps and even some contaminants on the surfaces. And unlike epoxies, there's no need for precise ratios...apply the resin to one of the surfaces to be bonded and an activator (or catalyst) to the other, stick them together, and in about 2 minutes the bond is "fixed". Badda-bing, Badda-boom. The problem is that these are very, very pricey adhesives (around $25 for an eensy, weensy, teensy, tiny 25 ml syringe of the resin...though that's supposed to be enough for 200 sq. inches) ...and not sold by just any old hardware store. I'm hoping that one of the Loctite distributors here in Colorado Springs (we have about 6) will have the stuff but, if not, I can get it from at least 2 on-line adhesive merchants.

Based on case studies I found on the internet, I'm sure this stuff is strong enough...one company is using it to attach micro-vortex generators to the wings of aircraft (instead of rivets). And the folks who run the particle accelerators at the national nuclear labs use it to attach the accelerator/focusing magnets to the tubing (an incredibly demanding application).