Repairing Tent Poles
2018-04-08 We have enjoyed camping with our grandkids and friends with our ALDI 5 14' x 10' 8-Person 2-Room Dome Tent (no longer available). It is fairly light, reasonably easy to set up and quite spacious. But the last time we took it out the elastic cord that holds the long fiberglass poles together broke. I'm sure I don't need to say it, but that makes it a pain to put together! A few days ago the thought occurred to me that perhaps I could replace that cord. So I ordered some replacement cord which came yesterday.
The process was pretty simple. First I had to pull the remaining part of the old cord out of the sections of the pole. I found one know about half way through which had kept the whole thing from coming apart. Next I cut the length of the new cord to match the old one. I had somehow managed to keep all of the old one even though it was broken. After finishing I think it would have been a good idea to cut it a foot longer or so. The cord seemed stretched a bit more than I felt comfortable with. Time will tell.
The instructions that came with the cord say to use the piece of thin wire included to push the cord through the sections by taping the cord to the wire. I decided to first try simply pushing the cord through the center of the sections. That actually worked quite well so I never used the wire. When I got about eight of the eleven sections threaded it was obvious I was going to have to find a way to stretch that part so I would have enough cord to go through the remaining sections. I found a small clamp that I could put on the cord at the end of each section allowing me to complete the task. I haven't used the pole yet but I think it will work just fine. The whole job only took about an hour.