Tricks for Mechanical Advantage

At age 76, I am not as strong as I used to be. The last time I put up the TM, I had to pull fairly hard and get a little momentum going to open the forward shell all the way. Also the pull had to be exerted at or above head level, as I remember, which was a little hard on my back. Anyway, I got it up and the rear shell came up much easier.

When I put the TM down, I couldnt get the back shell to snap down quite by stepping on the side U-bolt. I went and got a prybar and padded it and stuck it under the TM. With the mechanical advantage of the lever, the shell snapped down with no problem. The same trick worked well with the front shell.

This got me to thinking. There ought to be a number of leverage tricks to take the physical effort out of raising and lowering the TM for us old geezers. It should be possible to put a couple of eye bolts in the shells that a rope could be attached to. Then a stake could be driven in the ground with a pivot eye to the bottom of a 6 foot lever. The rope from the shell could be clipped to the middle of the lever, then one could just grab the top of the lever, lean back with your body weight, and the shell should snap into full extension with almost no physical strain on the body. There would be a vertical and forward lift on the stake at the foot of the lever, so one might have to go to a screw stake such as is used to anchor a dog chain.

Have any of you experimented with gimmicks like this? It seems to me that several months back, one one of the posters sold his TM and shifted to another RV because the physical disabilities that come with age made it difficult for him to cope with the TM. I thought at the time that that was a pity, since it seemed to me that a little ingenuity might be able to overcome the physical limitation.

Anyway, all you frequent posters are great in the ingenuity department. Perhaps, some of you have already developed tricks to use mechanical advantages, (levers, pulleys, etc.) to remove the strength requirement from the activities of camping with a TM. I can currently handle the operations mostly. But a few years down the line, I may have to develop such tricks (or trade my TM in on another RV). I would welcome any ideas that might postpone such a necessity into the far future.

Best Wishes,
WyomingRockHound