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After I posted the above i went out and dug our the Dexter parts and the Alcan parts. (My axles are not in yet, so I have all parts waiting on Dexter.) I continue to be a believer in the Alcan springs, but now have my doubts about their shackles and shackle bolts. The Dexter bolts are designed to be torqued to their shoulder. That will allow full rotation and flex of the EZ Flex and Spring ends which go to the Shackle. The Alcan bolts put full clamping force on the EZ Flex and the spring end of the shackles. I cannot see how that is a good idea. It resists rotation and flex... Comments please...

I noticed that the splines on the Alcan bolts do NOT engage the holes of the slightly longer shackles they provide. I asked Alcan about it and they do NOT want the shackles locked to one end of the bolts. The way they accomplish this is to drill the holes in their shackles slightly larger than the holes in the Dexter Shackles. I am still not sure I want to use the Alcan shackles and bolts. In any case do not mix and match Alcan and Dexter shackles and bolts.They are engineered differently and not designed to mix.

I chose the "peel and stick "Reflextic." There is as much as six layers of it under the driver side bunk and under the bathroom sink. If there was room for a 4" x 4" piece, a chunk went there.

I should also note that I was measuring the temperature between the hulls, in the belly by the water intakes. I wish I had placed a third recording thermometer inside the main cabin to see what the difference was between the cabin and the belly.

Great solution - I love the Blutech stuff. We’ve got the filter unit with UV, and the softener and iron tank. For inside the camper I’ve thought about adding that but don’t like drilling holes. But now they’ve got a new solution for hooking into your existing faucet. When the Black Friday deals come around this year I’ll probably pick this up.

Checking the BMS temps the problem with my Lithionics was more of too much heat, easily getting up to the high 90’s in early March. The batteries produce heat too from the BMS board and just from charge/discharge. The battery has a built in heater so if it gets cold no problem, that’ll take care of that. On my list is to add a automated fan to a top vent, I won’t otherwise insulate it. When we got to camp I’d open up the door to get it to cool down faster as the sun went down.

Looks to me like what you’d expect, just a temporal lag and smoothing. I think you don’t see the same minima/maxima because of the time lag - outside is already turned around before the inside reaches the min/max. fwiw tl/dr I spent a lot of stupid time (meaning I could have been doing something more useful 😅) thinking about the insulation on this thing. It’s really interesting, it’s basically all reflective/infrared. But for the most part air gapped everywhere except the belly band, which is what you need for that to be effective. Fiberglass bat This primarily slows down the rate of heat transfer. If the trailer had that we’d see a larger delta in the charts above. So it doesn’t stop the heat transfer, just slows it Reflective with air gap (Protex) This primarily works by actually reflecting the infrared heat, not the thermal brownian heat in the air its in contact with. So it does stop heat transfer - look at the moon landers with gold foil, or the James Web infrared telescope with its many laters of foil. Both effectively eliminate heat transfer from the sun Bits and pieces Rule of thumb I heard from an engineer in this field; reflective works better the greater the differential (outside to inside). Fiberglass shells are horrible insulators However, we have a double hull. Air gaps of 1/2” or under is as good as insulation bats (not a big enough space for convection currents. Note that seems to be about as much of the gap as we have. So the double hulls act as a buffering system, both giving the Protex the air gap it needs to work, and that enclosed air gap acting generally as dead air space. Putting it all together, in extreme conditions (hot or cold) the trailer should perform great due to the large delta between outside and in and the dual insulation, which is what I hear from owners. But due to the .5-1” air gaps you won’t see a large time lag in an idle trailer.

Intuitively that feels like a good solution. With your years you’ll know there’s few or no hard rules here. Every design outside of Aerospace comes with a lot of windage - ‘yes but …’ Anyhow I think all of these - 1750, 2400 and Alcan are likely just fine and there’s little to fear with any. But I do want to see power spectral density charts with each of them, easy to get with our phones.

We left for a trip yesterday. No Cat Scales where we live, but our city dump has scales. I go there often to recycle engine oil. With both Oliver axles on their scale, it came to only 5700 LBS. I’ve measured hitch weight separately at 580 LBS. We are packed light for a 3-day trip, so I estimate we’d pack another 220 LBS in food and clothing for a long trip adding to 6,500 LBS Max. So she’s sitting at only 5700 LBS on two axles! Shouldn’t 7,000 springs be enough? The Oliver is more top-heavy than most trailers, with its upper double hull, tall body, multiple cabinet storage at head height, rooftop A/C, solar panels and other rooftop accessories. We dropped 4000 FT in elevation yesterday! Coming down steep, hard turns, exhaust brake on, descending smoothly! The top of the Oliver stayed put, maybe leaning left or right 2” going into a hard turn. Look out your mirrors when towing to observe this. Our hull used to lean over a foot vs. just inches! Original springs, the Andersen WDH was a must! Not anymore, since the Alcan springs keeps the Oliver weight centered over its axles. This is why the OEM suspension is undersprung. It’s not only the weight it carries, it’s the total body weight it must control while towing in various conditions! 😎

Very impressive! My head hurts.😉

We like all of the Maricopa County parks, too!

I just upgraded my Furrion S rearview camera with the S+ and a 7-inch display. Huge improvement in resolution, features and display brightness over the original S and 5-inch display that was OEM (and basically worthless)!! The S+ camera slips into the old S housing so no mounting of the new housing on the exterior of the trailer and no rewiring needed. Since my TV is GM with the trailer camera functionality, I seriously considered going the way of this original thread instead, but my GM screen is small, and I can mount the 7-inch Furrion screen partially over the rearview mirror which isn't useful when towing and retain my TV display for the TV cameras. And again, no rewiring was necessary. (I thought I saw a prior thread where someone else did this upgrade but could not find it.)

Do you know if he Dexter PB4’s raised the height of the trailer? Is yes, by how much?

Cave Creek is our favorite of the Maricopa County Regional Parks. Often our first night away, just 90 min from home! There are currently 5 county parks, all excellent camping with hookups, around the perimeter of the Phoenix Valley. We've stayed at all of them! https://www.exploremaricopacountyparks.org/maricopa/facilities Snowbirds are gone, so the campground has lots of availability and it's not hot yet (high 80F today). Staying at campsite #9 for a few nights, the best in the park. It's like you have your own 5-acre campsite! 😎

https://www.elephants.com/

CGI Detailing: We’re planning our trip for this June to attend the mini-Oliver rally in Boothbay Maine and have some openings for a few more coatings after the rally. If you are in the New England area and your Oliver is due for ceramic coating maintenance, new coating treatment, paint protection film or oxidation removal this is the easiest time to get on our schedule without making the trip to Tennessee. More information about how pricing works while we travel and what areas we are covering is available on our website; there is also a contact form you can fill out if you would like us to contact you. If you’d rather bring your trailer to us in TN, we have openings in July! Oliver Ceramic Coating Travel Schedule www.cgidetailing.com

Carrying this thought out in comparison, Alcan to Dexter Leaf Spring packs: Dexter 4 leaf-OEM1750 LBS x 4 = 7,000 lbs (-20% = 5,600 LBS) Alcan 4 leaf-pack 2250 LBS x 4 = 9,000 lbs (-20% = 7,200 LBS) Dexter 4 leaf-SW4 2400 LBS x 4 = 9,600 lbs (-20% = 7,680 LBS) per @Geronimo John Alcan 5 leaf pack 2750 LBS x 4 =11,000 lbs (-20% = 8,800 LBS) Keep in mind besides this 20% “wiggle room” there should already be safety margin in the manufacturer’s spec capacities. But I like the additional 20% per Alcan! 😎

Mr. Jim Oliver told me personally that the frame was engineered to support 3X the GVWR. He stated that it was good to 21,000 pounds. Actually Oliver's GVWR of only 7000 pounds is due to their continued use of the underrated four leaf spring pack (the same ones that are breaking). This causes the otherwise 5200 pound Nev-R-Lube axle to be de-rated to 3500 pounds each.

I agree with you. That fifth spring is not very long. I am not an expert on springs, but I am more concerned and happy that Alcan went with the overlap on the first two longer springs. My logic, maybe flawed, says that the short fifth spring is not as important as those first two longer ones. John

I sure like that core heating system that was described on here. I can't recall his name. That should be offered by Oliver.

Wow. The first three statements encapsulate my position of opposition for 90% of OE2 owners to the 3,000 pound springs. For most owners they are "Over Sprung". But the 1750's for all of us running in the 6,000 pound class I have advocated long and hard that those springs are "Under Sprung" as they are loaded 100% of the time and are failing. For a new trailer, I would monitor the rear ends of the OEM 1750's and push their replacement out 4 or 5 years. If you see any flattenng of the rear ends, time to replace them. Also as a 50 Year Mechanical Engineer here and 3 independent Dexter Tech's determined that the middle ground between the 1750's and the 3,000's... The 2400 Dexters was a logical choice. They have been doing just fine for the last 20K miles or so..... WIll be putting another 9K this summer. For every one, it is wise to inspect your springs at the end of each season. If any flattening is observed, you would have the off season to replace them as you see fit. GJ

Yep, that’s why I wrote “over time.” To me that interesting data is that outside the temp swing/range was 38 degrees, while indoor the temp range was only 16. This shows the difference in the insulated space. The averages should be close over daily cycles. Thank you@Steph and Dud B, many of us love seeing some performance data of our Olivers!

That’s exactly what I used to think!. However, equalization requires a constant outdoor temperature, but that never occurs in a natural day/night cycle. The 57% swing shows that the insulation is effective enough that the interior can't track outdoor changes fast enough to equalize. You're right, it could be better, but it's way better than some drafty old trailers that I used to own.

Part 4, Custom Automatic Leveling — now with a phone app! The automatic leveling system is finally done, and it works fantastic! Although it was convenient and satisfying with just the control board switches, I made it even better with a phone app. The app works with the ESP32 microprocessor’s built-in WiFi, rather than Bluetooth, and the range is excellent. Besides better range, there were advantages of using WiFi over Bluetooth. Primarily for ease of development. An iPhone Bluetooth app must be developed with 3rd party software and managed through the app store. It’s tough for a hobbyist, especially with custom graphics and controls. With a WiFi app, it lives in the ESP32 firmware and it’s fully customizable with AI help, and easily revised. The app consists of 4 tabs, or pages, with the primary controls on the main page. Extra controls and features are in the other 3 pages. The pages are laid out as follows: Control — This page has the main Auto Leveling, Retract, and All Stop buttons. To prevent accidental activation, the buttons must be touched and held for 3/4 of a second (except the All Stop which is instant). The as-left readings (variance from target level) can be viewed in either inches or degrees, and the tolerance can be adjusted on page 3. The jacks motor current is also displayed with the idea that it could indicate jack degradation, but that feature is going away in the next revision because it’s too hard to correlate. Manual — This is an awesome feature on its own! The screen is similar to a LevelMate with graphics of the Olivers back and side, only it has manual jack controls too! The touch and hold buttons will raise and lower the jacks while showing the distance from level. I’ll probably use this feature a lot, especially for uneven terrain or if messing around with leveling blocks. Settings — This page contains settings for fine tuning. Any changes are temporary for the current session, but they can be flashed to the memory. There is also a reset to defaults button with a protective confirmation step: Pitch and Roll Tolerance — when set to 1/2” tolerance, the level usually gets to within 1/4” Ground Contact Detection Threshold — this determines how firmly the jacks are footed on the ground for stabilization. Default is 5 amps which closely matches where I used to set it by ear Retract - Clutch Runout — this shut-off delay determines how many clack-clacks are heard when jacks are parked. It’s set at 1/2 second, which is two clacks Leveling Step Durations — sets the jack’s incremental run time during leveling. It has 2 adjustable steps that decrease as the trailer nears level. This is important for accurate level sampling and coasting. Too little time increases timeout risk, while too much impacts accuracy. Finally there is the trailer width and length setting that’s used in the conversion formula for level degrees to inches. The longer pitch default distance from bumper to ball requires a wider tolerance than the width. Log — A summarized log of the Serial Monitor shows which jacks were activated and the different steps of automation. A Test Tone legend plays examples of tones for successful leveling, retraction, unsuccessful leveling, and calibration, although the tones are obvious and don’t really require a legend. This information has limited value and may get cut in next revision. The most important feature of this page is the calibration button. It has a secondary confirmation to prevent unintentional calibrations. This is used to reset the target level after maintenance, or if the front needs to be higher for tank drainage, etc. This concludes this project and I hope you found it interesting! Cheers! Geoff

Regardless of the R-value of insulation, interior and exterior temps will become equal over time. Also, when temps are in the 50s it's not the same test as when ambient temps are in the 20s, the teens or worse. What matters most is when we add furnace heat, will the temp rear of basement by the water lines be kept above freezing? Say it's consistently below freezing outside, what should interior temp be set at to keep the rear basement above freezing? We also keep a Ruuvi sensor in the same rear basement location (and 5 other locations), including one outdoors. Rear basement temps will not drop below freezing while camping, with our thermostat set to 63F. The rear basement temps is always above freezing a good +10 over outdoor temps. Generally we do not store and winterize, since we "winter" camp often (but no real winter down here). Winter overnights are often down to low-mid 20s by dawn, but then it will always warm up to 50F +/- in the sunny afternoons. If it's cold just a night or two, I do not worry. If we are to have multiple consecutive cold nights, I'll set the furnace to 50F if I had not blown the water lines clear. The Oliver could have better insulation, but it is certainly sufficient for our use. I like how it's thin so that we have room in the basement for mods. I would add more if we lived north. I did the battery bay door already. Good reminder to add some to our basement access door. 😂