I've been fantasizing about a nylon canopy with folding fiberglass shock
cord poles that would attach to the rain gutter on the driver's side and
then arch over and attach on the passenger side, for the length of the
van....and then have an awning flap for over the passenger/sliding door
side wiith folding poles, as well.  This would keep the sun off my
non-poptop vanagon and stop me from baking like a little apple during
summer sunlight hours!

When I got the van it had a roof rack that consisted of two pair of gutter
attached clamped deals that held two 2x4s up there (it was used to carry a
kayak)...I don't kayak, but I left them up there and sewed a couple of
8x20' silver tarps I had together, and then when I arrived at a weeklong
campout in treeless sun, I fastened the tarp to those 2x4 ends and got a
couple poles to make the 'awning' part stay up...helped a LOT with temp
control, but it was a heavy and ug-ly solution!

And the Montana wind whipped at it and I think contributed to the rain
gutter warp at the roof rack clamp sites :-(  (though they could have been
warped from 15 years of the kayak going up and down...I never really
noticed until I took the whole setup off there.)

For us non-camper models, there's gotta be some way to shade the van
without carrying our own shade trees! <pout>

--Patrice
"85 "Vana Blue"