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  2. Under the red tab on the black breaker box is a little swing arm that needs to be pushed back up into the breaker to make a complete circut. I couldn't get my camera under the breaker to take a pic.
  3. Today
  4. Just 4 days after our Oliver was delivered, I joined our great OTT Forum. My two favorite sections are "Where's Ollie" and "Ollie Modifications" where I frequent often! Early on, Bill @topgun2 referred to our hulls as "cousins" (our #113 and his #117). There are a lot of us with 2016 and older Olivers. These 10+ year-old Olivers have had nothing but special care through the years. I hear Scotty is just starting a renewal project of his own! You wrote "cost of ownership" vs. purchase price." As written above, I had budgeted 15,000 for upgrades (plus 1000 +/- hours in sweat equity) in addition to a very good used price for the hull. My detailed spreadsheet has documented a total of $16,120, so I'm a little over budget. This includes new D52 axles with Alcan Springs, 5 Victron devices, 900 Ah Epoch Essentials, new Chill Cube A/C and so many other documented upgrades. It includes an Emeril Air Fryer, new luxury bedding, new custom upholstered dinette seat cushions, additional shelving, multiple exhaust fans, etc. It includes every bracket, roll of tape, every nut and bolt I used in the last 3 years. I figure our cost of ownership, everything included, is 70% of the cost of a fully optioned new Oliver. Wouldn't trade her for a new Oliver, no way! I've made better choices in our upgrades, and I do better work than the contract installers OTT hires. Then there's the little things like this for example: Yeah, couldn't wait to ditch the dish! That thing was HUGE! I put a Winegard RZ-7500 TV antenna in its place (using 3M VHB tape, NO screw holes). It still appears to be large, but it's actually less than half the size of the Dish! As far as Starlink, I have that and our Pepwave cellular router built into the tow vehicle instead, so it's always with us while camping and on day trips. Picture shows the front roof completed, but before the detailing work. I hate caulking and I'm not good at it. I made a mess with Dicor caulk, not using that product again! But it looks great from the ground! 🤣 And no more useless Wi-Fi Ranger and cameras up top. Yes, the older hulls have some bonuses, some you mentioned, and the little things like separate switches for Entry and Side Porch lights (ours now have lights fore and aft too). Oliver Hull #113 is a family member. Our son Adam got to know her, camping the month of April around the Prescott NF. She will always be with us. 😎
  5. Another thought.... I know that Oliver is focused on selling new trailers... That's where their marketing is directed. But... How many of us remember the reason for the name "Legacy Elite". It's because this is a trailer that will endure. That you could hand down in your family over generations. JD's trailer is a perfect example of this. Oliver should feature this trailer in it's ads. TEN Years and still going strong! That's a story that shows the advantage of cost of ownership vs. purchase price. Good Job JD!
  6. I said "Summer Day".... not Nuclear Winter in FL! :-)
  7. Check the connections going into the back of the DC panel under the rear dinette seat. I had a similar problem and found a spade connector loose. A little crimp for a tighter fit of the red power wire was the solution.
  8. First, I would suggest a serious de-greasing: So much gunk in any hitch can cause it to stick when hooking up. GJ
  9. Yep, My original tire was a 215/60R/16, even though the DOT tag states spare tire size of 215/70R/16 and my current spare tire I installed is 225/75R/15 to fit in the fiberglass housing. The 215/60R/16 fit as tightly against the fiberglass hull as the current 225/75R/15 with two nuts on the stud as originally equipped from Oliver. Oliver made a change to 225/75R/16 spare tires with larger spare tire housings later after our Ollie was built. Now Oliver's current spare tire is 225/75R/15. Never had an issue with either spare being snug against the fiberglass hull with the wing nut tight and two nuts on the stud. @Dirt Duff, you have some good suggestions here to check out that should help find your issue.
  10. We laid out the gutter in HOT Florida sun, and about half of our installs failed when it shrunk over the following month or so. I have to remove it and will install as RoutLaw suggested above to prevent the hard turn with it's shrinkage issue. GJ
  11. I plan to replace the Master Switch upon my return home. Appears to be an easy fix.
  12. John, what an absolutely amazing job! It 'looks like' an Oliver but it's so much more now than that you've made improvements to all aspect of the trailer. I don't know if you follow the YouTube channel Dave's Auto Center but you could be the "Dave" of the Oliver world!
  13. I think I have heard good things about Fogatti WHs from RV techs on YouTube. I do like my Suburban though, for all the reasons mentioned above. It’s simple to be sure. Most things from WW-II were. I'm tired of everything getting more and more technical. And I’m a soon to be retired IT guy. LOL. I need a bumper sticker which reads “Suburban water heaters or death.” That goes for my Fiamma manual awning as well. Hehe
  14. John, Thanks for posting this! Our trailer (#145) came off the line in June of 2016. Oliver at that time was making about 2 per week so I am thinking the delivery date on #113 was sometime in February of that year. I've been proud to own her for ten years now and lucky to be able to store indoors for most of that. I have the satellite dish installed and appreciate the pictures of it's removal. I think it would be awesome to pull the guts out of it and put a Starlink Mini in there but that kind of work is way above my pay grade. What did you replace yours with? Looks like a smaller more angular version of the dish cover. I am sure it attracts less bugs that the original. I've had conversations with Oliver management about answering price objections with a "cost of ownership" vs. purchase price strategy. Your work on this trailer is a poster child for that. Ten year old trailer that, at least in my opinion, is better than new. When people talk about their automatic awnings and other new stuff, I like to bring up mirrored cabinet doors and Lonseal flooring. Thanks again for all the pics and sharing your work. Hope our paths cross in the future. Scotty
  15. I had removed the Dometic Penguin A/C prior to this work. I temporarily filled the 14x14” opening with a piece of plywood to keep dust out while allowing Cameron the room above to make the entire rear roof shine! It’s always a mess under an old A/C. Good thing we did because the new Chill Cube is a foot shorter to the rear. With my son’s help, we installed the new Furrion Chill Cube A/C. One last task was to restore the rear bumper area. I removed the mounts for the bicycle rack we don’t use, drilled out more rivets and removed the deck plate and folding bumper. I cleaned the inside waste hose area, and steel brushed, sanded and ceramic coated all parts. I've been wanting to write this up for a few months now. Chris is out of town on her annual "Sisters Trip." Adam's been working overtime and it's boring being home alone. That’s it – she’s all done! 😎 When it's time for some love again, I'll drop her off with Cameron for a renewal! No more Ugly Duckling, but quite the Beautiful Swan she is now!
  16. An autobody professional I’ve used before suggested a local guy who runs a detailing shop at the far end of Chino Valley, the town north of Prescott. Cameron came by our home, looked over the Oliver carefully, at every angle. He explained what he would do and gave me a reasonable quote. We picked a start date and shook hands. He asked for 2 weeks, so he could work on our Oliver along with other scheduled work. When 2 weeks had come, he asked another two days to “to really get her right!” She was a thing of beauty, in that every square inch of the hull was shining so brightly! We have never seen our hull in this amazing condition. While Cameron was working on the shine, I was working on restoring or replacing all the trim parts. I painted the fridge vents, the furnace and HWH covers a medium gray to match the Oliver graphics and the gray on our truck.
  17. I wanted the final outcome to far surpass the large investment in stripping, cleaning, buffing and ceramic coating. This meant a whole lot of extra work. I’m not the guy who hires the guy, drop it off and they will handle everything. Shops only do what they’re paid to do. I wanted to do everything I could do to make the final result far better. My first step was to remove all the awful silicone caulk. What mess as you can see in the first picture. Then I went around the entire hull leaving piles of old caulk along the driveway. This extra work was truly worth the effort. I also removed every trim part, outlet covers, awning mounts, the covers to the furnace and HWH, the handles, latches and hatch on the doghouse, the door hook (no longer needed with Lippert friction hinges), the cameras fore and aft I’ve never used and all the old-tech like the WiFi Ranger and the monster rooftop satellite dish! This way, my detailer had a wide-open canvas to focus on stripping, cleaning, buffing, polishing and ceramic coating without a lot of stuff being in the way!
  18. It didn’t take long, parked outdoors in the Arizona sun, to become a dull pasty white! She started with four 6V lead acid batteries, an old 2KW Xantrex inverter only with PD converter in the power panel. She had wires all over the battery bay and everywhere else for that matter, fuses and breakers under beds, manual water valves and the mess it was born with spread out into every corner of the basement. And it had old-tech accessories; the cameras fore and aft, a WiFi Ranger, Dish satellite and that awful Dometic P2! All that has been corrected and improved with a lot of Marine-Tex used to fill nearly 100 holes! And what a silicone mess that OTT started at the factory and some owners believe caulk on top of old caulk is proper maintenance! In the two years from 2024 to 2025 I rebuilt almost every electrical, mechanical and plumbing system in our 10-year-old Oliver Travel Trailer. It’s been a lot of work, but our Oliver is worth it! I plan to enter another post to chronical all my repair and modification work but here we’ll focus on its cosmetic restoration. The finale was to dress up our Ugly Duckling. Not merely gelcoat buffing and ceramic coating, but a complete exterior body restoration!
  19. "The Ugly Duckling is a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a duckling who is rejected by his siblings due to his unusual appearance. After enduring hardship and loneliness, he matures into a beautiful swan, illustrating the theme that true beauty comes from within and that one should not be judged by outward appearances.” We were fortunate to find our Oliver three years ago for sale right in our neighborhood! And at the time, we had no idea what an Oliver is and what makes it special! It didn’t take long though, since just 5 days after we first viewed our Oliver was paid in full, so the prior owner delivered it to our home on June 7th 2023. This day is also Chris’ birthday and what a special surprise it was. Chris loves every time we get away in our Oliver, and me too! I generally buy used vehicles in good condition, letting the original owner absorb the new-price depreciation. I enjoy fixin’ them up, making them as good as new and better, making them mine! From the start, I had planned on making repairs, mods and upgrades with a budget an additional $15,000, just for parts. With good patience, ample time and craftsmanship she could become something special! Hull #113 was well cared for; prior owners kept her clean and often kept her covered. She returned to the factory in 2018 and 2021 for maintenance and other services; new white blinds, new Atwood furnace and much more. Also in 2021, she moved from Florida to Las Vegas and was ceramic coated at the time. Always from the South and SW has kept corrosion at bay. Good records were kept and we are now the 4th owners. She looked good when we first got her and everything was in working order.
  20. We are in Nashville, approx 1.5 hours from Hohenwald. That is the biggest reason that we went with Oliver. Bob
  21. I have found that sometime the switches on the master panel just inside the door don’t work or work intermittently. Usually if I turn them on and off a couple of times the problem resolves. I’ve always attributed it to a little fiberglass dust in between the contacts or a little oxidation of the contacts from disuse. It has been a little annoying but not a serious issue. The only other switch issue I have had was when one of the spade connectors fell off the pump switch in the bathroom. When that happened, only the switch by the Truma control panel would turn on the pump.
  22. My guess is also to replace the master switch. On the list when I get home from northern Wisconsin.
  23. Don't get too comfortable! 🤣 I see two things that are wrong... First the wire harness should not be fed through the wheel. When you do get your spare tight the tire will be jamming the wire harness against the hull making the spare sit on a tilt. The wire harness should sit outside of the tire but make sure you push it inside the fiberglass cover in the end. Secondly, your lock nut is keeping the large circular "wingnut" from tightening your tire against the hull, hence the wobble. I just checked and mine does not have a locknut. If I had one, it would certainly be in the way of tightening down the spare. The nut is greater than 1/2" tall and there is about 3/8" of space on ours. It's likely one of those things where OTT did not stick to a standard hull to hull. I believe @rideandfly's spare is new, not original so perhaps his fits. IT does really depend on the tire width. I also have a large concave washer not seen in anybody else's picture. This supports the fiberglass on the spare cover when tightening the outer locknut. In my picture, the fiberglass cover fits in where I created a space on the threaded shaft, all hardware is mounted in the order shown. @Dirt Duff, I suggest you remove your locknut, feed the wire harness correctly, crank 'er down and you should be fine! 😎
  24. Same with mine. I just put the rub pads on to prevent the tire from scuffing the gel coat. My wheel fits firmly. It’s in storage so I couldn’t tell you if it has one nut or two, but I vaguely recall just one. The pads won’t help your wobble, something else isn’t right.
  25. My truma cp plus control module went out one time. I finally found the 1 amp fuse to it, pulled it out and placed it back in. Then it worked again. Just seem you are dealing with a loose connection or a janky fuse. Better have the wiring diagram handy for the next time.
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